


and we will be elided by the people that we love most

by teamfreehoodies



Series: the most dangerous thing is to love (you will heal and you'll rise above) [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief Mention of Suicide, De-Aged!Jaskier | Dandelion, Emotional Hurt, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Exploration of Motherhood, F/M, Families of Choice, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, Ignoring the annoying parts of canon as is MY RIGHT, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, In that bb Julian is gonna show up, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Kid!Fic, Kidnapping, Listen I don't speak Polish, M/M, Mommy Issues, No Beta We Die On Our Weird Hills, Panic Attacks, Physical Hurt too Yikes, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn, Winter At Kaer Morhen, a little bit of torture, abuse of metaphor, complicated familial relationships, i think you can guess where this is going, or Elder I am not that kind of nerd BUT we do like secret languages so here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 64,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24870391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies
Summary: “What did you give me?” he growls, burying his fear beneath a burst of anger. The room around them splinters, making gravity an uncertain principle: vertigo makes him drool and he spits, falling over, digging his fingers into the ground in a futile effort to make everything just stop spinning. “Oh fuck, wha’ ‘id you do t’me?” he slurs out past a suddenly numb tongue. The icy burn has spread out from his throat and chest to take over his whole body, sending lightning strikes of pain zinging up and down his limbs.“You’ll find out soon enough, I think.”Yennefer is healing after Sodden, trying to pull her chaos back inside herself. She doesn't actually have time to chase down wayward bards, much less take care of the child-sized version of one she's never particularly liked all that well. She really is quite tired of being forced to save this fool.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: the most dangerous thing is to love (you will heal and you'll rise above) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910713
Comments: 163
Kudos: 576
Collections: Geralt is Sorry





	1. I've learned how to forgive (these childish games are behind me)

**Author's Note:**

> They say write what you know and what I know are complicated family dynamics and coming to terms with the ways in which your parents failed you as a child. Jaskier is my emotional support bard and so ALL OF THE BAD THINGS happen to him. I didn't really know how to tag this, or summarize it, so if you think I've forgotten a tag I should have included just let me know. 
> 
> Yennefer doesn't really show up until part two, but fear not, the focus of the rest of the fic will be on her and Jaskier Bonding. This is plotted out and planned but I don't know how long it's going to be. I'm thinking three parts? Not sure tho, so keep an eye on that.
> 
> Title from "Sarcophagus" by Charlie Allen

When Julian was small (much smaller than he is now) his mother would sometimes speak to him in the Old Tongue. Usually late at night, when she was trying to convince a fidgety Julian that sundown meant bedtime and the world would still be waiting for him tomorrow, but he really truly did need to be in bed right that moment, or sometimes, in the early morning, before breakfast, when she would sit at the big kitchen table, holding a warm cup of tea in her palms, when she would run a hand through his hair and call him _Julek_. It was never enough to really learn, no more than picking up bits and pieces anyways, and for all the sins that Jaskier now holds against his father, this perhaps is the most egregious of them. She would stop as soon as another listener might appear, so while Jaskier never learned to speak it, it still warms him to hear it in the ragged corners of the continent where it still exists, few and fleeting as they are.

Sometimes, rarest of all, she would sing him lullabies in the Old Tongue, lilting melodies which soothed the aching hurt in his chest and quick ditties and children’s songs which instantly brightened his spirits whenever she was lucid enough to care for performing that kind of motherly devotion. Rare. But not absent, and so Jaskier has forgiven more than he rightfully should.

Staring at the freshly dug earth where his mother’s body is soon to be laid, he can’t stop his mind from wandering. The de Lettenhove estate looms over his shoulder and he notices that even at its zenith the shadow is not long enough to touch this part of the property. At least she can be free in death, the way she was not in life. It’s a cold comfort, but Jaskier is used to such things.

He’s early, is technically supposed to be helping with the preparations inside the estate proper, but... he’d needed to breathe and there was no space inside that house to exhale, not with his father directing the staff with the same militaristic zeal as ever and his sister, with her grief weaponized, obsessing over flower arrangements and the food’s presentation— as if their mother was still watching, hawk-eyed to catch any imperfection before it had the chance to mar that perfect visage she’d spent so much of her life creating.

Jaskier sighs slowly, scrubbing one hand roughly through his hair. He was being unkind, turning maudlin before his time, (though certainly there was a precedent in his family for that). It wasn’t Loretta’s fault that she tended towards overbearing in stressful situations, no more than it was his fault he tended to talk and talk and talk his way out of trouble, even before the trouble had a chance to register it was coming. She’d grown up in that house as well, after all.

The breeze kicks up, blowing Jaskier’s hair in his face, and he breathes deeply, inhaling the subtle scent of the wildflower field they were co-opting to be his mother’s final resting place. It seems fitting, to be lain to rest amongst something pretty and wild, the way she’d once been, before motherhood found her wanting and left her haunted by what she couldn’t have anymore, before the melancholy reached up to strangle her. The poison she’d brewed into her morning tea is why there is no larger ceremony, why no cousins are coming in, no aunts or uncles or extended family at all, (a blessing in some respects: the less Jaskier has to see of Ferrant the better). Suicide is taboo enough to deny her a spot in the Pankratz mausoleum. Surely, she must have known, he thinks, turning over a grass clod with his foot. She suffered no fools, his own person notwithstanding, and if she’d gone through with it anyways than Julian wasn’t going to bother railing against it the way Loretta had tried at first. The Count could not be swayed; even this memorial had been a concession on his part, wanting to have it done quickly and out of the way so it would be forgotten easier, the way only boring stories were, nothing at all like the tales Jaskier told, heroics and heartbreak and just enough onion to keep both his Witcher and his audience happy.

Snatches of songs in the Old Tongue whisper past his ears and he smiles softly, imagining those quiet nights when she’d sing him to sleep. He doesn’t have many true memories of those earlier times, but he can recall a gentle hand in his hair, the way the music made him feel safe, how comforting her presence could be when it was softened by the twilight. She disappeared with the sun, becoming a different, colder person by day, vacantly attending to her duties as the Countess, too busy for Julian’s exuberance, his childish energy that he never really outgrew. _You were always too much for her,_ he thinks, _selfish_.

He dashes a lonely tear from his eyes, breathes out shakily and turns back towards the house. Better to get this over with than let this feeling in his chest fester. He’s no stranger to emotional letting, but he can’t afford that here, not when appearance matters so very much. He can cry and rage and scream when he gets back to Oxenfurt. Until then, he has to hold everything inside of himself, lest it upset the delicate balance they are all attempting to strike.

* * *

When Julian leaves Kerak the first time he is bubbling over with enthusiasm for what Oxenfurt is going to teach him, the ways it will change his life. When Jaskier leaves Kerak for the last time, a heavy weight compresses his chest, keeping his heart a steady metronome beat to march onwards to.

* * *

(Later, in an argument loudly held in a back alley that Loretta drags him into after tracking him down on the road to the latest tavern willing to give him coin, she will accidentally tell him that their mother put buttercups in her tea that morning. Will let slip this secret, kept for near-on fifteen years, because their father has died and Jaskier won’t return for the funeral, won’t return to be stuffed into a life not meant for him, one which would strangle him entirely. The irony makes him gag fitfully and he vomits half his ale, leaning entirely over a convenient barrel to his left. Loretta gasps, and rubs his back and whispers half apologies into his hair as he cries, drunk and maudlin and overwhelmed anew. “I never meant to tell you, I’m so sorry,” Loretta pleads, smoothing his hair away from his forehead, hugging his shoulders to keep him from slumping entirely to the dirty ground. It’s not her fault, he thinks, blearily ignoring the tears streaming down his face, the half animal gasping sobs which feel torn from his chest. He didn’t cry at the funeral, he remembers, distant from his body and the scene it is making, _I didn’t cry at the funeral because I am crying now_ , because she used to call him Jaskier in the Old Tongue and he made his identity around it and she put buttercups in her tea and he can’t face what that means. Guilt rises, acidic, in the back of his throat and he would vomit again if there were anything left inside of him. Instead he dry-heaves, and Loretta holds him, and she whispers apologies as her tears wet his hair.)

* * *

 _My mother doesn’t love me_ , he thinks at seven, sitting crushed between his luggage as he is shipped to Temple school.

_My mother doesn’t love me enough_ , he thinks at seventeen, watching the warmth in her eyes bleed away as she rises from the kitchen table, the last time he will see her before she dies.

_My mother loves me, but she loved me wrong_ , he thinks at twenty, picking distractedly at his lute as he watches a young mother in the crowd hug her bouncing child. She is listening attentively as he spins a tale about dragons and witchers and witches and Jaskier aches with wanting to see the soft smile on her face as she beams at her little boy. Is it jealousy? Is it grief? This nameless hurt in his chest is soothed only by these half-truths anyways, so what does naming it matter. He turns back to the lute.

_My mother didn’t know how to love me, but she tried sometimes. Shouldn’t that be enough?_ He thinks at forty-three, watching buttercups sway in a distant field, trying to remember the Old Tongue lullabies that soothed him to sleep, trying to forget the poisoned tea that took her away.

* * *

Sometimes he thinks that maybe he wants someone to know. The longer he spends with Geralt the more he thinks it might soothe the yawning emptiness in his core if Geralt knew from whence it stemmed. But then, didn’t he know enough? Weren’t they joined by the jagged edges of their pain which so well matched each other? Wasn’t it enough that Geralt let him follow, that they shared a bedroll, and a purse, and clothes, sometimes, that Geralt let him stay, let him close, let him _help,_ let him be useful, the way he has always been afraid he never could be? Is it selfish to want to unburden his hurts? And for what? What would Geralt do with the knowledge? Pity him? See the truth of his rotten core and come to his senses? Better not to test the edges of what they shared now. Jaskier knows the value of fragile things, and better, the value of leaving them as such.

* * *

He doesn’t go back to Lettenhove, and Loretta becomes the Countess. This is how it always should have been.

* * *

He receives a letter, which is not in and of itself unusual—Essi and Priscilla and Marjorie de Staael have all taken to writing him not infrequently since his professorship was announced and he took up wintering at the university—but the letterhead marks it as being from his sister.... which is. He hasn’t spoken to her since she tracked him down personally to try and bring him back to Lettenhove for his father’s funeral, and it’s been almost ten years since then. He’s tempted to leave it unopened. Let sleeping dogs lie.

But then again, he’s always been the curious sort, and there’s some gentle stirrings of hope for a potential reunion in his heart, even still. The distance between them wasn’t always there, and he aches for the times before all the hurt, when they played together as children and plotted out their individual futures with hearts singing for the boundless possibilities spinning out before them. Decided, he breaks the heavy wax seal, and slides the letter free of its envelope. He sits next to his only window and angles the parchment to better catch the evening light:

> _Dear Julian,_
> 
> _I hope this letter finds you well. I have had a hard time writing this, and I wish I had your elegance. I admit, for some time I was furious with you for not coming home, and I regret that I didn’t try and reach out sooner. They say that resentment withers the soul, and maybe it’s not a great reason but I watched my son sing one of your songs to cheer up his little friend yesterday and I thought, Julian used to do that for me. I miss you so much, Julian. We had such fun as children and I regret that I didn’t ask you home when he was born. Maybe you would have come for a joyful occasion. He’s nine now, my Matias, and I want you to meet him. He knows all your songs, we had a band play at his last name day celebration and they played that new one about your witcher, so now he wants to find his own witcher to go on adventures with. Would you come and dissuade him? I heard from the Roggovens’ that their daughter was so excited to be taught by the famous Jaskier, bard to the White Wolf, and I thought this might be a good enough address to write to you. I know it’s a few days journey from Oxenfurt, but I do hope you’ll come quickly. Send word ahead and we’ll have a room prepared._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Loretta_

He can’t picture the Roggoven girl, but he’s had plenty of students start excited and then drop his lecture once they realized it wasn’t all Witcher stories, and actually focused more on complex musical theory. (If he senses more is off about this letter than that... well, hope and love have blinded more than one man to their doom, and poets most often of all.)

* * *

The estate seems smaller, though no less prosperous than he remembers. Loretta has done well by the people of Lettenhove, and though he is nervous about what she may say he’s also trying to temper a fragile hope. Maybe this, at least, is a hurt he can help heal, instead of foolishly handing out. Resolved, he lets his feet carry him up the path to the door. It’s opened just as he ascends the last stair and the dismayed face of his sister peers out at him. “I’m so sorry.” She mouths soundlessly at him, before suddenly drawing herself up, putting on a show. But for whom? “Julian!” she near shouts, gaily enough though her eyes are pleading for something from Jaskier. He slows, disconcerted, but willing enough to play along for now. “Come in, please, Matias is just this way.” She gestures him into the foyer, and he chances a look around as he steps over the threshold, noting the ways it’s changed. God, it’s been almost twenty years since he was here last, and it had been decorated for mourning then. Loretta has made this a much warmer place than it was in their childhood; there’s a fire crackling in the hearth and the family crest is mounted above it. There are fresh flowers on the side tables and a busy little alcove full of discarded outerwear makes it feel actually lived in.

“I love what you’ve done with the place, Loretta, do you pick the flowers yourself?” he asks, moving forward to smooth a petal between his fingers. He’s caught by Loretta’s small hand in the crook of his elbow. Her nails prick sharply through his doublet, and her smile, when he meets her eyes, surprised and slightly alarmed, is noticeably more strained than it was at the door. There are tears glittering in the corners of her eyes, making the blue stand out harshly against the white pallor of her face.  
“I had no choice,” She whispers to him, pleading again for that unnameable something. Louder she continues, “I do! It keeps my hands busy, you know what they say about idle hands, Julian.” Something is deeply wrong; if he wasn’t sure before, the naked fear on his sister’s face is enough to clue him in.

“Ah, you know I never had the sense to listen to the wives’ warnings, Lottie.” He says, patting her hand comfortingly; whatever danger is here it won’t do to give up the ruse until his hand is forced. She leans into him, bumping her head against his shoulder, just for a moment.

“Oh god,” she laughs, wetly, as they move further into the house. “I haven’t been called that in years.” They step into the kitchen and whatever they had been playacting falls away in an instant. There are Nilfgaardian soldiers in Loretta’s house, his childhood home, their black wrinkled armor impossible to miss. Little Matias, only nine, is standing in front of the tallest soldier, held in place by a hand on his shoulder and her husband is being held up by the other two, both arms restrained behind his back and a knife at his throat as insurance, no doubt. He’s clearly unconscious, the knife purely a cruelty intended for his sister. Fuck. A fourth soldier melts out of the shadows to hold Loretta as well, dragging her away from Jaskier.

“I’m sorry, Julian,” she sobs as her tears finally break free of her careful restraint. “They said they’d kill my son, he’s just a child!” She rips herself out of the soldier’s hold to kneel, weeping, on the stone floor. “I love you, I love you, forgive me!” she wails, even as the soldier picks her back up again, roughly dragging her backwards to fall in line with the rest of her family. Whatever passes for his heart these days freezes in his chest, fear and betrayal both sheeting down his spine. This is so much worse than whatever trickery he’d originally assumed was going on.

“Lottie?” he asks, but it’s no use, the gig is up and though he’d been safe from the war in Oxenfurt, it’s here now. Damnably dragging him further into its machinations. Destiny, thou art a ruthless bitch. The soldier holding Matias crushes something in his hand with a thunderous snap, drawing Jaskier’s attention away from Loretta and the terrible tableaux of her sorrow, laid bare. They’ve made no sound, save for that snap, and their silence presses in on him, filling him with uneasy dread. That level of discipline comes only through rigorous training and a true belief in the cause: he’s not escaping this on the powers of his silver tongue.

A portal spins into existence between him and the soldiers, offering a brief glimpse of someplace dark and foreboding, before it snaps closed behind the terrifying mage that steps out of it. Power ebbs around Yennefer like it wants to jump out of her, leashed and straining against her control, but this mage feels more like a void. She sucks the air out of the room and Loretta’s sobs cut off suddenly with no more than a glance from the mage. Her silver dress contrasts strikingly with her dark skin and Jaskier wishes futilely that mages and sorceresses weren’t all exactly as terrifying as they are beautiful. He’d always suspected he was going to die at the hands of a beautiful woman, he’d just not pictured it happening quite so immediately.

“Julian Alfred Pankratz,” she intones, ignoring the men behind her to focus all of that terrifying gaze on Jaskier. “You are a difficult man to track down.”

“Ah, yes, well that sort of goes hand in hand with the... traveling bard routine, I’m usually... uh, traveling as it were.”

“Nilfgaard has need of you. Will you come quietly, and spare your family, or should I try more... persuasive routes?” As she says this, she lets lightning dance across her fingers, smirking cruelly as Jaskier’s attention immediately shifts to the causal display of power. He’s being played but there’s very little he can do to avoid it. They both know she has all the leverage in this situation.

He hesitates only a moment, just long enough to register the fear in Loretta’s eyes before he capitulates. They’ve got him scuppered and everybody here knows it. “I’ve never turned down an invitation to play at court. I see no reason to start now.”

* * *

It’s the last clear memory he has for a long time.

* * *

“Where is the witcher?”

He jerks back up on his tiptoes, straining to hold his aching body up enough that the rope around his neck won’t choke him.

* * *

“Where is the witcher?”

He closes his eyes, and they slice another line into his stomach.

* * *

"Where is the witcher?”

He bites his tongue, and a scream dies in his throat as the brand burns into his skin once more.

* * *

“Where is the witcher?”

He shakes his head, and they push it back under the surface. He thrashes weakly, lungs burning, and they yank him out, chest burning as he leans over the side of the trough, retching. “Where is the witcher?”

“No, no, no, nononono,” he moans, tears mingling with the ice-cold water dripping from his hair and face.

“Tell us what we want to hear and this all goes away, Jaskier.”

He feels distant from his body as it shakes and trembles and rattles around him, so he can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up from his core, even if he wanted to.

“You’re a shitty liar, you know that?”

And they push him back into the water.

* * *

The cell that makes up his entire world now that he’s been captured is dark and cramped and reeks constantly. It echoes, sending his own screams railing back at him, and making his tormentors questions linger in the air. An angry chorus buzzes beneath his skin, _where is he where is he when is he coming tell us where he is don’t you just want this to stop,_ and he moans, shoving his head further into the cold stone beneath his cheek. Time is a murky soup, slipping in and out of his grasp. He’s no idea how long he’s been here, if he’s ever not been here. Voices filter past his awareness, words that don’t make sense. He strains, trying to separate the noise into individual voices. The chatter remains indistinct, but it grows louder as the door to his cell swings open on its rusted hinges. The godawful screech must be part of the torture, he decides, blearily fighting to wake up enough to meet the fresh hell on the way for him. That door never opens unless it’s followed by pain, the same question, the same vile men, an unending procession of misery. The voices slowly coalesce into distinct voices:

“Quit quibbling, Rience. The White Flame demands your compliance.”

“Of course, I only question the rashness of this decision. Have I not proven my effectiveness?”

“I’ve known you to break men quicker than this. We don’t have the luxury of time. The moon is ready tonight, so we must act.”

A boot digs into his shoulder, and he’s slowly pushed over onto his back. Blearily he recognizes the mage standing over him. Great. He’d been afraid they were going to torture him with magic next. The conversation about the moon flips over in the back of his mind, and he wonders what ill that bodes for him. She smiles, teeth perfectly white and straight and all the more frightening for it, as she crouches down to hover over his broken body. He feels strangely detached from his physical form, like it doesn’t really belong to him anymore. Her hand strikes out, lightning quick and his head rocks from the sudden force of her slap. His physical form sorted out and brought back to him, he rolls his eyes back to face her.

“Has common courtesy so degraded in my time here?” he rasps, alarmed to hear his own voice for the first-time in.... well. He’s no real frame of reference but it strikes him as not sounding the way he remembers it.

“Common courtesy is reserved for those who are worthy of my time and attention, not maggots who get in the way.” She hisses, digging her fingers painfully into his cheeks. “Rience, the potion.” She demands over her shoulder, still holding his face. Is he to be dosed with truth potion? All his resistance, his pain, his suffering, to be made useless by fucking magic?

“Truth serum is cheating, you heinous bitch.” He forces out, speaking through the painful compressing of his face by her firm hand.

“Would that it were, we’d have employed it ages ago, bard. A truth serum is not actually magically possible, more’s the pity. Fear not,” she says, admiring the potion that Rience has passed into her palm. It shimmers, a stunning dark silver shot through with streaks of white so iridescent it catches an array of greens and blues as she rotates it and the scant light flashes off of the tiny vial, “we’ve another use for you, little maggot.” It’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, it’s everything he’s been afraid of this entire time. That no resistance he could offer would ever be enough. He’s been doing little else but delaying the inevitable. All that pain, and suffering, and still, they will have gotten what they want.

“Fuck you.” he spits at her, furious and frightened and fucking done with being a pawn in someone else’s game. He lunges forward, half-mad, angling for the potion in her grip. He doesn’t get very far. She uses the grip she still has on his face to slam him back down into the ground, clacking his head painfully off the stone.

“None of that, now.” She says, underscored by the gentle _thwup_ of the cork popping as she unseals the potion. It’s hard to see, the impact having doubled his vision, but he doesn’t need a visual to know what’s happening. The glass is cold where she’s placed it against his bottom lip, and the overpowering aroma of something like peppermint, dialed to eleven, makes his eyes water and his nose burn. He tries to twist his head, but her hand holds him firm. She forces his mouth open by the simple expedient of covering his nose, so that he has no choice but to gasp, ugly and loud in the anticipatory silence of the mage and Rience, that fucking ponce. The sound echoes, a final torture before they kill him, his failure reverberating against the stone. The potion is oddly tasteless, and if it weren’t for the shockingly painful chill of it, so cold it almost feels warm against his tongue, he might think they’d changed their mind about drugging him. He doesn’t want to swallow it, but he can’t breathe and his traitorous body doesn’t give him a chance to do anything else. It coats his throat on the way down, like burning ice which is spreading even as the mage finally releases his face and starts backing up.

“What did you give me?” he growls, trying to bury his fear beneath his anger. The room around them splinters, making gravity an uncertain principle: vertigo makes him drool and he spits, falling over, trying to dig his fingers into the ground to make everything just stop spinning. “Oh fuck, wha’ ‘id you do t’me?” he slurs out past a suddenly numb tongue. The icy burn has spread out from his throat and chest to take over his whole body, sending lightning strikes of pain zinging up and down his limbs.

“You’ll find out soon enough, I think.”

His whole body is consumed by the warring sensations of fire and ice; it burns both ways and he arches his back on a scream, clawing at his own arms, overwhelmed by the visceral desire to rid himself of their fucking sorcery. He sobs, he screams, he wails, but nothing tempers the pain and he loses consciousness as the world cracks apart around him.

* * *

(Much later, far away, in a village so small it has no name, a soldier sets a sleeping child on a darkened stoop. The soldier pauses, hovering over the small form. He has been ordered to kill the child. There is a dagger in his hand and poison enough on his person that this should be an easy task. He has been a soldier his whole life, just like his father was before him, a tradition he has been proud to uphold over his years of service. Discipline saves lives, and he knows better than to question a superior officer. He has never killed a child before, and this feels more like an assassination than an acceptable war-time casualty.

The dagger or the poison. “Fuck” he says, putting both away. He has never disobeyed a direct order before, but he is not an assassin, and what harm can a child do to the war effort? Gently, he brushes the boy’s fringe from his face, offering up a quick prayer to Melitle that the matron of this house take pity on the poor boy and take him in. There is no further kindness he can offer, and already he has tarried enough.)

* * *

When Julian was small, much smaller than he is now, his mother used to speak to him in the Old Tongue. Julian would try to mimic her and she would always laugh as his uncertain mouth tripped over the strange syllables, brushing his hair from his face. “Julek,” she would say smiling so big, just for him “Julek, my little buttercup, will you sing for me?”

* * *

When Julian wakes up, the sky is above him, and his clothes are not the clothes he went to sleep in last night. For that matter, he does not appear to be where he went to sleep last night. He wakes up with the old tongue ringing in his ears and blood in his mouth. A face appears in the sky above his head, and he blinks stupidly up at an ancient woman who is not his mother.

“What are you doing here, child? Where is your mother?”

“I don’t know,” he says, because it is true, because he’s not supposed to lie to elders, because he is scared and not where he went to sleep last night.

“Oh, baby,” she whispers, gathering him up in her arms as he dissolves into tears. “You’re not old enough to be out here all alone, where did you come from?”

“Home,” he sobs, “I wanna go back.”

The old woman (who is actually a young woman, not yet running her own household) hugs him tighter. “Does home have a name? Do you have a name?” she asks, rubbing her hand soothingly against his back.

“’m Julian,” he says, wiping his face off on her shoulder.

“Well met, Julian!” she says, smiling at him and jostling him gently from side to side. He giggles, rubbing his eyes and tries to smile back at her. “Julian of where then, love? Hmm?” she asks, trying to catch his shy little gaze.

“Kerack,” comes her answer, as he rubs one little arm across his nose.

“Kerack! That’s in Redania, dearie, how’d you come to be so far out of country?”

“I just woke up here.” He asserts, and well. There’s not much she can do with that.

“Right. Let’s take a walk into town then, Julian. I bet your Mommy is looking for you right now!” So saying she stands up, grabbing one of his little hands. The town proper is not so far, and while they’re not large they do receive their own fair share of travelers. Someone must be missing a child this adorable and all news travels through town eventually. They’ll find someone.

* * *

They don’t find anyone. There are no frantic mothers, searching high and low, no fathers, masking worry with anger as they shout the child’s name. In fact, there isn’t anyone searching for a missing child at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't promise consistent updates on this but I CAN promise it will be finished. I wrote this part in like.... three days and it's not even the part I'm most excited for though so perhaps this will be done faster than I am worried. 
> 
> in other news the next sections are much less ..... like this. This is kind of like a prologue to the good stuff.
> 
> Chapter title from "I Hope You Die in a Fire" by Grand Commander.


	2. An Interlude in Three Parts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so as a novice archive user, please forgive me as I finagle with this and if this doesn't make sense: This is Now Chapter Two! The Old Chapter Two is now Chapter Three! 
> 
> EXPLANATION:
> 
> I was like halfway through Geralt!POV of the next section of the story and then someone rightfully pointed out that I kind of skipped over how Jaskier came to be on the street instead of with the lovely (as of then unnamed) woman who found him and I had been sort of planning to do like a backwards explanation later, but then it occurred to me that Nilfgaard's reasoning wasn't well explained enough (also thank u to this user) (whispers: do you want to beta read this???) and I thought OKAY no more lazy story telling here we go. So, you now have *checks notes* 8,000 words? that can't be right. No okay holy shit yeah, 8k more words of story and no progress towards getting Jask un-bb!fied. Uhhh. There is more exploration of motherhood though? And some quick blink and you'll miss it Lesbian Subtext so like. Cheers?

_Nilfgaard:_

Rience has been breaking prisoners for the better part of a decade by the time the bard is brought to him. It’s a point of pride that he’s never failed to get his answers. The bard is... infuriating. They’ve been searching for the child since Cintra fell, and Fringilla has already reported Cahir’s failures back to Emhyr; they’re still letting him lead the search on the ground, but moves have been made behind the scenes to try and find the child through more.... unusual means. Intelligence from the Emperor himself says that if the child is no longer in Cintra, she may very well have been found by the Witcher that lay claim over her, twelve years ago while the Usurper still reigned. This is both a boon and a curse, solid intelligence, irrefutable, but it does rather complicate matters. Witcher’s are travelers and the continent is wide. They need to recover the child so they can explain the role she plays in saving the world, so the will of the White Flame can be carried out. All of this means that it’s the most important moment of Reince’s life and career, here, to break this bard and uncover the Witcher’s location. But the bard is stubborn. Oh, he was easy enough to track down, famous as he was, and though collecting him necessitated stealth, they did it well enough that no one even knows he’s missing. Save for his family, but they’ve been paid well enough and are being watched to maintain this secret.

The bard laughs when they torture him, sings when they beat him, lies when they ask were the witcher is, where he was headed last, where he would hide with a child in tow. Fringilla is getting antsy, checking in two or even three times a day with that damn Xenovox. As if she knows what it takes to get useable information from torture. You have to strike the right balance between fear and hope, pain and respite—have to make them believe there is an end if they only give up the right information. This is an art. It will not be rushed, not even for Fringilla Vigo, right hand of the White Flame herself.

* * *

Rience is so close to breaking the bard. It’s in those pretty blue eyes, just hiding behind the thin veneer of defiance and Rience knows it will only take another week or so to get him.

“Rience.” Fringilla’s been getting ever more impatient since Cahir’s most recent setback— it’s not fair that where Cahir fails Rience is punished, but mages are a capricious, impatient lot, so Rience isn’t actually surprised that she chooses to interfere with him so regularly. Still, every time he is forced to answer her little Xenovox calls he has to compose himself so as not to demand she leave him be. Annoying and impatient she may be, but she could swat him out of existence with the Emperor’s full blessing and half a second of thought and he’s conscious of that reality always.

“Fringilla, it’s not been more than a day since your last call.” He says, leaning back in his chair. Ahead of him his men are drowning the bard, and they look up to him, a silent question in their eyes. He motions for them to carry on, and they dunk the bard’s head back in the pig’s trough. Rience watches him thrash disinterestedly as he waits for Fringilla to answer.

“I need to know if the bard has broken. The White Flame grows impatient.” Her voice is just loud enough to hear over the splashing water from the bard, but he stands up to leave anyways, sensing this conversation would be better held elsewhere. His men continue on behind him as he leaves the dungeon, headed for the parapet on the east tower. It’s a quiet place, and the walk is not too far— perhaps he’ll even finish this conversation before he reaches it.

“We’re very close. Perhaps another week or so, though you know this is an imprecise art Fringilla.” He says quietly, nodding to the guards he passes as he turns down the main hallway.

“We needed that information a week ago, or have you forgotten what we risk the longer the child is away from us?” Rience would roll his eyes if he weren’t half-afraid she’d know somehow, but this isn’t the first time she’s told him he moves too slow with his subjects. He’s not a monster— he likes to leave his subjects able to live still when he’s done with them. The White Flame has never complained himself, and so Rience is mostly just irritated with her impatience.

“I’m aware of the risks, Fringilla. But unless you have another way of getting the information, you’ll just have to be patient. You’ll be the first to know when I have my success.” He turns the final corner, and shoves the door open with his shoulder, stepping through to lean against the wall overlooking the valley, enjoying the cool night breeze as it brushes by his overheated face. The dungeon is cramped and dank and dismal, getting out of there every so often is a simple pleasure he indulges as often as he can.

“I have something better.” She says, quietly triumphant, and Rience tightens his grip on the little Xenovox.

“You have what.” He asks, flat and annoyed; he’s almost certain she’s going to try and swoop in and steal his victory and that will simply not do.

“I have a better use for the bard . Tomorrow is a new moon, I’ll need him ready.”

“Ready for what?” Rience interrupts, properly pissed now at her for running roughshod over his dungeon.

“Ready for the ritual, Rience. The White Flame demands it. You’re to purify some of his blood, I’ll need it for the potion.” Rience has somewhat suspected that Fringilla invokes the White Flame more often than she’s supposed to. This feels like one of those times.

“Why are you asking this of me? I don’t know anything of witchcraft and it’s not actually my job to report to you.” It’s as close to impudence as he’s ever come with Fringilla, but the fury in his blood is still singing and its rapidly overcoming his fear of her. His limbs shake with the adrenaline as he waits her response.

“Watch your tone, Rience,” she finally answers, mildly enough. “I speak for the Emperor directly; would you not say you answer to him?”

“No, no, of course I answer to the Emperor, I only meant— “

She cuts him off, “Excellent Rience, I knew you understood your place. Have the blood ready for me by tomorrow.”

* * *

The bard stayed unconscious through the bleeding— easy enough to obtain, much trickier to purify. Fringilla had given him explicit directions, but even as he’s staring at the newly purified blood he’s not certain he’s done it correctly. It still looks like plain red blood to him. Fringilla clears her throat from where she’s grinding herbs into paste at her worktable, and Rience jerks out of his reverie. It is what it is, and Fringilla had seemed pleased enough when he first presented it to her upon arriving at her workshop this morning. She holds out one hand expectantly, and he sets the little vial of blood in it, coming around the table so he can better see what she’s doing. Her little cauldron is steaming, a thick, viscously green concoction bubbling away. It smells weirdly pleasant for as dangerous as it looks. Fringilla is examining the blood. She tilts it against the light streaming in from the open windows, (Rience wishes his office had windows, but of course he’s just the dungeon master) checking it for—what, consistency? Fuck if Rience knows, he’s just the errand-boy apparently.

“It’s all there.” he says mulishly, wondering what she sees it in that he couldn’t. Sorceresses don’t get less mystifying with exposure nor less aggravating. Fringilla doesn’t make any move to indicate she’s heard him, continuing with her inspection of the vial. Satisfied at last, she pours it into the bubbling cauldron, which hisses at the new introduction. As the last few drops fall slowly into the cauldron, the color separates, pulling away from where the blood is turning the liquid a shimmering white, leaving pockets of that green to fold into themselves. Pleased, Fringilla hums lightly, before she flicks her eyes to look at Rience.

“You’ve done well. We’ll administer it tonight, while the moon is hidden.”

“What does it do?” Rience asks, looking away from the potion finally. The minty smell of it is steadily spreading and it almost makes his eyes water before Fringilla drops a cover over the cauldron.

“I’m going to transform the bard into a child.”

“I’m sorry, you’re going to what?” Rience pushes back from the worktable, incensed now that her lunacy has come to light. “Come off it, Fringilla, that’s not possible.”

Fringilla doesn’t so much as blink against his ire. “Do not presume to tell me what is and is not possible, I decide reality.” Fucking sorceresses. Different track then.

“For what purpose then, just because it _is_ possible? He has valuable information to offer to the White Flame, what can he give us as a child?” Rience asks, wanting very badly to drop his face in his palms.

“You need to widen your gaze, Rience. It doesn’t matter what we do with the bard, if we break him or kill him or turn him into a child—the White Flame _will_ achieve its goals.” Fringilla moves around the bench, coming to lean against it so she’s facing Rience still but the bench is no longer between them. “It is destiny,” she says, leaning in to his space, “this is an opportunity. Magic like this has not been attempted in centuries, deemed too dangerous by those fools of the brotherhood. If we can turn back time, just imagine what else we can do?” Rience forms careful fists with his hands behind his back, frustrated but aware that what he wants matters little here.

“This still doesn’t make sense to me, Fringilla. He’s going to break soon, I know it. This seems like you’re risking more than we stand to gain.” Fringilla pauses at his words, and for a moment he thinks he’s gotten through to her. But only a moment. She sighs, deeply shifting her weight away from Reince; he breathes a little easier without her overwhelming presence so close to him.

“Destiny watches over the White Flame” she says, short with him now. “How long have you had the bard? A month? Two?” she scoffs, rolling her eyes dismissively, “I’ve known you to break men in a quarter of that time. Your failure here should not be attributed to the bard— he’s nothing but a fool. This is a sign. We are meant to use him for this.”

“What is _this_!?” shouts Rience, fully beyond his understanding of the situation— this feels uniquely unhinged to him. What does she think this will accomplish? “What is the point, when I am so close? How am I to get information on the White Wolf from a fucking child?” He explodes, throwing his hands in the air and stepping back from the table.

Fringilla is scowling at him still, and as he paces he tries to shake off the feeling of her eyes, burning into him.

“Are you quite done with your tantrum?” She asks, and he scoffs opening his mouth to answer before she cuts him off, “No. It does not matter to me if you understand what I am doing, but in deference to the many years you’ve served the White Flame I’ll ignore this.... indiscretion.”

He pulls himself back together, aware that he’s in a precarious situation here.

“My apologies, I just....” he takes a deep breath, flexing his hands to release the tension of keeping them clenched for so long. “I have questions, and would request an explanation. Especially— in light of my years of service.”

Fringilla nods, considering. “Very well. Listen closely: The White Flame is assured to succeed—Destiny herself is smiling on us. Cahir is out in the field, tracking the child, and Geralt of Rivia is a public figure now, thanks to that very bard. This venture is only an attempt to speed up our timeline: We will not fail. It’s a question of _when_ we capture the child, not _if_. You understand?” She pauses to wait for his nod, before she continues, “Good. Then you can see how, thanks to the time already elapsed, your little venture has not actually served us well in that regard.” Rience opens his mouth to again assure her that he’s close—but she waves a hand, cutting him off, “The bard is a fool, and he should have broken by now. We both know this is an unusual failure for you. For all your brashness, you are very talented at what you do.” He nods, assuaged by her acknowledgment of his work. “I believe this to be a sign- he’s survived so long only because Destiny wills it to be so. Children are malleable. You can mold them to believe whatever you need them to believe, and they will grow up true-believers in the cause, not discontented peasants just waiting to organize a rebellion.”

“So,” Rience begins, desperate to make sense of what she’s saying, “you plan to change the bard to see if... it’s possible? So that you can make children anew of our citizens. So that they won’t try to rebel?”

“Of course not,” she scoffs, flipping one hand through the air dismissively. Rience breaths out relieved. “Just the leaders of such rebellions. Their passion and skills will be a boon to the White Flame, so long as they believe. With a dedicated method to identifying and then retraining, we can be assured our vision will be carried out by the best of the best. It’s as Destiny wills it.” Fringilla smiles, as Rience tries to understand. He supposes, in a roundabout way it does make some kind of sense, but it seems.... like an awfully long term prospect. “Your perspective is limited by your mortality. You think what we do now is enough, because it’s all that you will be able to see accomplished in your lifetime.” Fringilla smiles at him, and he feels suddenly smaller to be standing in front of her. “If the experiment works, and the bard is turned, then we will have proof of concept and we can kill the bard and be done with this. If the experiment fails, and the bard dies, then we have lost nothing, and I’ll know the potion needs to be tweaked.”

“What, you would kill him without getting more information?” Has all his work been for nothing? “What of the White Wolf? That’s why we captured the bard in the first place.” Rience says, throwing one hand up in a gesture of semi-resigned defeat.

“You are a terrible listener, Rience.” Fringilla mutters rubbing one hand against her temple. “I have already told you- there is no information to be gleaned from the bard, not anymore. He didn’t tell us anything and now any time we thought he was going to save us has been lost. His fate is already sealed. This just gives me a chance to make sure our plans will be fruitful in the future.”

Rience opens his mouth to argue further, incensed to discover that the past weeks of effort have been diminished to nothing, but Fringilla quells him with a single look.

Fringilla pulls the cover off the potion, and the peppermint smell floods Rience’s senses. Eyes streaming, he blinks at Fringilla as she ignores him to pour a portion into a small glass vial. He wipes his eyes, and she stoppers the vial, and then places the cover back over the cauldron. “Here,” she says, tossing him the vial. “Keep that safe until we need it later.” Rience catches it, surprised by how cold the glass is, even though it had been near boiling only moments ago. He nods at Fringilla, pocketing it, and turns to leave the workshop.

* * *

The transformation is... horrible. Rience has seen men flayed, hung, quartered; seen them bloodied and beaten, drowned them, and burned them, and cut them himself but the grotesque bubbling of flesh and snapping of bones as the bard writhes in front of them is almost too much for even him to stomach. He turns away until the bard stops screaming, only looking back when he’s resorted to wheezing breaths instead.

Where once a full-grown man had been laid out on the floor of the dungeon, now there is a child swathed in the man’s clothes.

“It worked!” he can’t help but exclaim, coming closer to see what the child now looks like. Fringilla hums disinterestedly as he turns the unconscious boy over. He looks to be about six or seven, maybe a very small eight; no bigger than Rience’s own son. The abrasions and cuts that had been on the bard’s face are gone, and the broken leg is straight now, the broken arm fixed, the hands no longer bloodied and swollen. He pushes the suddenly comically large shirt out of the way, and the boy’s chest is similarly whole, and his neck is no longer ringed in bruises. It’s nothing short of miraculous.

“Wake him,” Fringilla orders. Rience shakes the boy, and his eyes flutter open slowly. He looks at Rience, frowns, and then immediately loses consciousness again. Rience shakes him again, heaving him up so he’s sitting against the wall with his head lolling down into his narrow chest. He pushes against his forehead to hold his head up and then snaps his fingers several times in front of his face. The boy scrunches his face up, but then his eyes do open. Rience smiles, pleased to see it's worked. He looks back to Fringilla, to see what she thinks, but the coldness of her expression deters him from saying anything congratulatory. He turns back to the child, who, though he is conscious, doesn’t seem fully cognizant of where he is.

“Jaskier,” he says, hoping to get more coherence out of the child, but the name doesn’t seem to register with the child at all. He blinks slowly, and then slower still, and then his head falls forward again, and he starts snoring quietly. He lets go of the child, and his body slowly slumps closer to the ground as Rience stands up and steps away from it. “Well, there you have it,” he says dusting his hands off as he turns to Fringilla, “proof of concept in the form of one bard turned child.”

“Yes,” Fringilla says, already turning away, “now kill it, you’ve other prisoners awaiting your attention.”

“You don’t want to check to see if his mind is there?” Rience asks, slightly horrified that she expects him to be the one to murder what is for all intents and purposes a literal child. Fringilla doesn’t even pause in her stride out of the dungeon cell.

“If he has survived the transformation then so too is his mind transformed.” She turns at the door to smile at him. “I know my magic, Rience. You’d do well to remember that.” She leaves, closing the door behind them, and the only sound in the room are the soft snores of the child crumpled against the wall.

* * *

Rience tries. He’s loyal to the emperor, of course he is, but... he has a son the same size and no one has ever asked him to kill a child before. It’s not technically disobeying if he has another soldier kill the bard, just... offloading. Delegating. He’s allowed to delegate such a heinous task. And if his soldier asks to be allowed to move the child first? Who is he to question how someone carries out an order he himself wouldn’t want to carry out? It’s not disloyalty. It’s.... well.

It’s just not.

* * *

_Later: Small Backwater Village_

Razea has been running errands to town ever since she was big enough to hold the basket and carry the load the half hour or so it took to make the walk from the farm into where the market was held. Of all the chores she’s responsible for, it’s definitely her favorite though. It takes all day, and she gets a chance to talk to Odase, her only friend in town. She’s waiting at their usual meetup, basking in the noon-time sun as it warms her face. She’s completed her shopping, and the basket is sitting safely on the large rock that she’s leaning against as she waits for Odase to show up. It’s not like Odase to be late, but Razea isn’t worried. Nothing exciting ever happens here, and the longer Odase takes the longer Razea has until she has to head home.

A little time passes, and Razea is beginning to actually worry when Odase finally appears just up the road. “Odase! There you are,” Razea laughs, jumping off her rock to approach faster, “I was beginning to think you’d forsaken me this week!” As Razea approaches the reason for Odase’s lateness becomes apparent. She’s leading a child alongside her. “It can’t have been that long since I’ve seen you last,” she says, “a whole child? How old is your little straggler then?” Odase rolls her eyes at Razea, used to her terrible sense of humor by now.

“Come off it,” she says, continuing to walk towards the large rock. Razea turns to walk with them, peering interestedly at the child. He’s so little, and the tunic he’s wearing is so ill-fitted it might well be a dress. “I found him on our door this morning, and I thought I’d take him back to town, find his mother, reunite with the family, you know the usual touching stuff,” she says. They’ve reached the rock, and she turns to pick the quiet little boy up, setting him up on the rock so that he’s at eye level with her. “Poor thing, we couldn’t find anyone looking for him in town. He’s really properly lost, this one.”

“Oh, Odie,” Razea says gently, leaning into her side as they both look at the child. “Hi,” she says to him, smiling to soften her voice, “my name’s Razea, what’s yours?”

“Julian.” He says, quiet, but meeting her eyes. Good sign.

“How’d you get to be on Odase’s doorstep, Julian?” Odase steps on her foot, and Razea pulls back, yelping, “What!?” she hisses, “I want to know!” Julian giggles at Razea’s antics, and she winks at Odase, gesturing at Julian, “See! He doesn’t mind, do ya’ Julian?”

“No,” he says still giggling. His voice is high as a bell, and his mirth is infectious. Razea smiles, looking at Odase, who’s also smiling now.

“He says he just woke up there,” Odase answers for him, leaning back against the rock next to him, still looking at Razea. “It’s a mystery for the ages I think, but now we’ve got to solve it. I figured if anyone could help it would be Razea.” Razea wants to blush, but years of controlling herself around Odase allow her to fight her body’s first reaction.

“Well,” she says, speaking through the smile that wants to take over her face, “I’m duly flattered.” She leans against the rock on the other side of Julian, then looks up to meet his eyes. “Alright, Julian, what are your parent’s names? Maybe we can find them that way.”

“I don’t know,” he says, chewing on one thumb. Razea blinks up at him, surprised, though, really, she thinks, did she know her parent’s names before she was doing chores? Julian probably isn’t old enough to be doing anything that would require knowing, but it does mean that avenue is cut off.

“Okay, well—”

“He’s from Kerack.” Odase cuts in, she leans back to snag an apple out of Razea’s basket, and Razea sticks her tongue out at her in retaliation.

“How’d he end up all the way over here then?” she asks, surprised and slightly alarmed. This is beginning to sound like the poor kid was abandoned, not innocently lost.

“That’s the question, ain’t it,” Odase answers, speaking through a mouthful of her ill-gotten apple. Razea snags an apple too, handing it immediately to Julian, who spits on it before rubbing it against his shirt to polish it. Gross, Razea thinks, helplessly charmed.

“Well, I guess he can come live on the farm with me,” she says, thinking of her own litter of siblings back home. She’s sure her mother wouldn’t actually notice another one popping up.

“I’m gonna find my mum.” Julian says, thought a mouthful of apple, surprisingly determined for how soft he’d sounded earlier.

“No offense, kid,” Razea says, taken aback, “but you’re just a little pip-squeak. How’re you gonna pull that off?”

Odase glares at her again, but Razea’s never held back in her life and it’s a decent enough question; she really is curious about his plans.

“She’s looking for me, so if I just keep going, I’ll find her on the way,” he says, nodding definitively as if the matter is settled. Odase makes a show of nodding along, as if this lunacy makes perfect sense, but Razea can’t help herself, she laughs.

“Ya’ hear that, Odie?” She says, angling herself so she’s staring across Julian straight at Odase. “He’s gonna just find her on the way.”

“Be nice, Razea!” Odase says, “He’s just a little one.” She rubs one hand in circles on his back, and Razea watches in quiet contemplation, feeling only a little chastised. It is a peculiar situation, she thinks. Abandoned kid, left on a doorstep? Mother was probably too poor to feed the wretched thing: if she had to guess she’d call him six or seven by his size, but he talks like he’s older than that, and she’s never known a kid that age to be so calm about being lost, or to have the gumption to just try and keep going. She imagines her little sister, lost far from home, and thinks the poor tike would just sob herself unconscious until some poor bugger came and helped her out. Well, who knows, she thinks, maybe this kid could do it.

“I’m not little.” He says, “I’m just not tall.” Which is unassailable logic, she’ll give him that.

“Regardless of stature,” she laughs, “you need someplace to sleep tonight, I’d wager,” she says, reaching around him to pick up her basket. “Do you want to come over for dinner then, Odase? We’ll feed you and the kid, give him a place to sleep tonight at least, then we can see about getting someone to take him to, uhh,” she pauses, looking at the kid’s eyes, “where did you say you were from?” He smiles at her, and his whole face lights up from his cornflower blue eyes all the way to his tiny white teeth.

“Kerack! You’ll really take me?” He leans forward so quickly he tips over, and Razea and Odase both lunge forward to catch him. He giggles delightedly as Odase completes the catch, swinging him up and around before depositing him gently on her hip. Both Odase and Julian have lost their apples, but Julian didn’t brain himself on the ground, so all’s well that ends well the way Razea sees it.

“I’ll take that to mean you at least want fed,” she says smiling at Julian. Odase rolls her eyes at her, but as Razea starts walking back down the lane she quickly falls in line, swinging Julian down to the ground so he can walk beside them.

* * *

Dinner is a loud affair at Razea’s house; how could it not be, when she has six little siblings clamoring to be fed? The youngest, Kanisi is just three winters old, and the next closest to Razea, Ilasah, is nearing fifteen, and ought to soon be finding a husband, or would be, except the war has taken all the men from the village off to be soldiers. That’s where their father’s been these past two years, and why Razea is running the farm for her mother. She’d wanted to go to school, but the farm needed workers, and... well. There were hungry mouths to feed. It was somewhat of a double-edged sword, the war starting when it did. Razea hadn’t wanted to find a husband, and then conveniently all the men of the village had been gone. But it had also meant she couldn’t exactly run away to school like she’d wanted either. She’d been older than most of the students, but even now she could admit it had always been something of a dream. And an absurd one at that. Kanisi gives an almighty cry of discontent, and Razea tunes back into dinner. Kanisi _had been_ preoccupied tossing peas off of her plate to the dog, but now she's upset that all the peas are gone. Odase and Julian are talking quietly to each other and Razea’s mother is ignoring the noise in favor of staring listlessly out of the window, the way she’s been since Razea’s father had left. Expected, but still, Razea ruthlessly squashes the brief flash of frustration: she’s no time for that when Kanisi needs more peas. She’s so busy wrangling and feeding her siblings, (with only limited help from Ilasah, mulishly offered at that), that she doesn’t get a chance to really talk to Odase until after dinner, after she’s sent Ilasah to entertain the younger ones in the yard. Odase and Julian have moved to the little bed that Razea sleeps on in the main room, and they’re playing patty-cake—it’s almost offensively cute and Razea takes great pleasure in flopping down between them, interrupting the game.

“Oh! You absolute scamp,” Odase laughs, half-way through a startled scream; Julian is lost to a laughing fit, and Razea wants to bottle this feeling and keep it close, watching the gentle flush of Odase’s cheeks as she smiles down at her. Julian interrupts the moment, clambering over Razea to sit on her stomach, and she starts wheezing exaggeratedly as he digs his little limbs into her sides.

“Help, Odase! I’m being crushed!” She wheezes out, play-acting for the benefit of both of them.

“Mmm, I think a light crushing could be good for her, what do you think, Julian?” Odase asks, ignoring Razea’s continued pleas for mercy. Julian must think it’s agreeable, because he starts bouncing up and down on Razea, punctuated by rambunctious giggles.

“That’s it!” Razea playfully yells, tickling his sides until he’s shrieking with laughter, and she can sit up, dislodging him. She guides his graceless fall off her stomach to the side, until he flops into Odase’s lap, breathing heavily, and giggling still. She thinks of her siblings, playing in the yard, and aches keenly for the kind of levity she used to have with them before her father left and she became their de facto mother. There’s been a tension in their relationship for the last two years, slowly splitting them apart. It used to be like this more often, she thinks, heart heavy in her chest. She wants it to be like this more easily.

There’s a shuffling noise from the door, and Razea looks over, surprised to see her mother standing there, smiling.

“What’s all this racket going on?” she asks, leaning one shoulder against the door frame, relaxed, looking more present than she has in a long time—maybe since Ilasah’s most recent name day, when she’d pulled herself together enough to celebrate before retreating back into the greyed-out pre-mourning she did in her window.

“We were just playing.” Odase says, filling in for the stunned blank where Razea should have been the one to speak up.

“Yeah, mom, sorry.” She says, hot guilt crawling up her chest.

“No, no,” her mother starts, smiling wryly, “I just... I miss hearing you girls laugh is all, it’s” she pauses, looks down at the ground, then back up to meet Razea’s eyes. “It’s lovely, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She looks around the little room, then smiles at them again. “Are your siblings outside?”

“Yeah, I sent them out with Ilasah, she’s watching them all, I didn’t leave them alone,” Razea speaks quickly, holding her breath because this is the most alive her mother’s been in so long; she doesn’t want to ruin it by calling attention to it.

“No, it’s...” her mother pauses, frowning slightly before she starts again, “I didn’t think you would, I just...” she trails off, moving further into the room. She pulls short suddenly, having caught sight of Julian where had been semi-successfully hiding himself in Odase’s lap. “Oh, hello!” she says, smiling warmly, “we’ve picked up another one have we?”

“Mom, this is Julian, he ate dinner with us? You remember we told you we’re taking him into town tomorrow to see if someone will take him to Kerack?” Razea offers, hoping to jog her mother’s memory. She knows that sometimes her mother won’t really register things as they happen around her, reacting hours later, if at all.

“Ah, right yes, the little boy on Odase’s door, I remember you said about that. I’m so sorry,” she laughs, waving quietly at Julian, “I’m afraid I don’t always give the best showing these days.”

Julian smiles shyly at her, tucking his head a little more firmly into Odase’s stomach. “It’s alright, mom,” Razea says, sitting up completely, “we do okay.” This must have been the wrong thing to say. Her mother exhales quickly, a short little sound, then smiles wetly at Razea.

“I know you do, baby. I know you do.” She makes a weird little gesture to the door, sort of dipping her head in that direction. “I’m just gonna go check on Ilasah, make sure the little monsters haven’t overrun her.” Razea watches her go, feeling strangely off-kilter, like her mother from before the war is peering out from the curtains of the last two years and trying to break through. She wants to trust it, but it’s so sudden. Her mother stops for a moment in the doorway, before she smiles again at Razea, “I love you,” she says and then leaves, the words left to sit with Razea behind her.

She’s startled from her stunned reverie by Odase clearing her throat awkwardly. “I should probably head back home,” she says, shifting Julian off her lap as she stands up. “It’s going to be dark soon.” She looks at the window, where the evening light is already shifting, then smiles back at Razea and Julian. “You’ll be alright with Razea, yeah? I’ll meet you tomorrow morning in the square, help you find a traveler.” She directs the last bit at Razea, but Julian answers her with a quiet _thank you_.

“Sorry that got so... weird,” Razea says, uncomfortable with Odase having witnessed whatever that was. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she finishes quickly, not wanting Odase to respond to the first. She’d try to say it wasn’t weird, or otherwise make some comment that would be comforting on the surface, but further reinforce the reality of what had just happened— Razea was too raw right now to be able to handle that with any grace, and she didn’t want to cry in front of Julian, afraid of scaring him. Odase, being an actual divine force, simply nods, stepping forward to hug Razea and then Julian before she steps out of the door after Razea’s mother. Her shouted goodbye to the others in the yard floats back into where Razea and Julian are held still in the room, paused out of some strange recognition of the emotions trapped in Razea’s throat. She blinks rapidly, dispelling the stubborn tears trying to gather, and then turns back to smile at Julian, determined to salvage his evening and recapture the bright mood from earlier. Julian is staring up at her, a contemplative pout taking shape on his face.

“My mum is like that too,” he says, leaning forward over his crossed legs. Which is.... just... Razea’s heart _hurts_ , heavy and tight in her chest, how is she supposed to handle this?

“I think moms are complicated, buddy.” She says, feeling inadequate and wrong footed and still so raw. “It doesn’t mean they don’t love us, it’s just harder for them to show it sometimes.” She has said this before, to Ilasah and to herself, but it doesn’t get less hollow through repetition.

* * *

As promised, Odase is waiting for them in the town square when they arrive the next morning, and she swings Julian up and around again, laughing in time with his delighted shrieking. Razea wants to roll her eyes, but she can’t help the quiet smile that takes over instead. She feels less raw than she did last night, soothed by the return to some semblance of purpose, and she’s absolutely determined that they’re going to find someone to take Julian back to Kerack. They haven’t discussed it but Razea knows that both she and Odase are in agreement that it would be safer if they could find a woman going north, rather than trusting little Julian to anyone else. The only men traveling through their small town anymore are either soldiers or deserters, and neither could be trusted with a child. Razea’s got half an idea that the itinerant cheesemonger that comes through their town might be due for a visit soon, and might perhaps already be in town. She’s a sweet woman, and travels all over—they could easily convince her to take a child to Kerack.

“I’ve found someone already.” Odase says, interrupting Razea’s musings: she needs to stop drifting off, she thinks, annoyed at herself or being so distractible.

“Already!?” she laughs, looking around at the almost deserted square. They’re not the only ones here this morning, but it’s a near thing: a few women are scattered about, doing chores and the hedge-witch has got her apprentice sweeping the stoop, but there’s no one who looks ready for traveling. “Where are they then? How’d you do that so fast, you can’t have been here that long, can you?” Razea asks, reaching forward to take Julian back from Odase. She settles him on her hip, looking suspiciously at Odase. She’s looking entirely too smug for the situation, and she’s bouncing up and down on her toes excitedly.

An unwelcome realization is coming over Razea, “Odase, no, you know— “

She’s cut off by Odase: “Yes! It’s perfect, we’ll take him! You’ve always wanted an adventure, right? What better than returning a lost child? Reuniting a family? We’d be heroes, Razea! Plus it would be fun!” she’s practically manic in her glee, but Razea, much as she wants to get caught up in it, has six siblings at home and she’s practical enough to know they wouldn’t make it two days on the road, having no money and no supplies between them.

“We can’t,” she says, unyielding. She doesn’t often take this tone with Odase, not wanting to upset her but it’s better to cut this off at the bud before it flowers too much into something romanticized by Odase’s more flighty tendencies.

“Please?” Julian cuts in, looking up at her with those baby blue puppy dog eyes. Fuck, what did Razea do to always be the bad guy? Being the eldest daughter was truly a curse.

“I’m sorry, Julian,” she says, setting him down because she really can’t be holding him for this, “but if we took you back to your family, then we’d be away from ours. They need us to stay, just like your mom needs you to find a way back to her, right?” Julian nods, miserably, and Razea glares at Odase over his head. Odase looks properly chastised.

“Alright, let’s go in to the tavern then, see if any travelers have come through.” Odase offers, grabbing Julian’s hand. She mouths a contrite _sorry_ at Razea. She waves it off, all forgiven, and follows them into the tavern.

Inside, it’s dark, chairs still up on tables for the most part, a fine layer of dust settled over all but the two tables closest the door and the bar, where Hubrilt (spared from the war by his gimp leg and on account of owning an essential business) is drawing a beer for, as luck would have it, a traveler. Razea and Odase exchange excited looks before they both draw up to the counter, either side of the traveler. Hubrilt casts a wary eye over them, taking stock of Julian tucked up against Razea’s leg but choosing to ignore him in favor or plopping the beer down in front of the stranger, collecting the coin they’ve left in recompense, and then walking back into the kitchen after shooting Razea a quick ‘washing my hands of this’ gesture. Hubrilt is good fun, and usually ignores them: the traveler seems to want to do the same, but Odase has an astounding capacity for being unthreateningly annoying when she puts her mind to it. Case in point; it only takes another minute or so of pointed staring before the traveler throws back the last of their beer and, in the same motion, the hood which obscures their face, finally ready to acknowledge them. The traveler turns out to be a woman, her hair cut short and choppy, falling around her face in a dark curtain which cuts Razea off from seeing her features, turned towards Odase as she is.

“Is there something I can do you for ya’ lass?” asks the traveler, leaning back enough that Razea can see past her to Odase, catching just a glimpse of dark features and green eyes. Odase smiles, pleased to be addressed.

“Yes actually. You could tell us where you’re traveling, so that we might ask a favor of you,” she says.

“I’m no bard, to be trading messages without coin. But I’m headed north for what it’s worth, and I might be enticed to help you if the price is right.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Razea offers, picking Julian up to use the full force of his baby blues on this stranger, “We’ve no coin, but this poor lad is lost and in need of protection on his way back home.” She cuddles him into her chest, aware that she is pulling the heartstrings of this woman, ah, see, there’s the subtle softening of a brow, the barest downturn to her mouth. “He’s from Redania, in the direction you’re already headed, and he’s just desperate to get back to his mother.” Without prompting, Julian sniffles, very convincingly, dragging his arm across his nose in another pathetic display of his poor plight.

“Please ma’am, I just wanna go home,’’ he says, voice quavering, in a distressingly genuine precursor to tears. Razea watches, half hiding her face in his hair, as the reluctance falls out of this poor woman’s shoulders.

“Ach, I know when I’m being swindled,” she says, standing up from the bar. “Name’s Nefna, you can quit your playacting, I’ll take him with me. Always was a soft touch. Just, no crying alright? I will not handle a child’s tears.”

“You’ll really take him?” asks Odase, coming around to stand next to Razea again.

“I said I would. It’s a bad enough journey to go your lonesome, and if the child needs to go that way, I’m no monster to turn him away. I’ve enough to get me there without starving if I add the child.” Nefna says, leaning down to pick up a pack from the shadows beneath the bar. “I’m leaving now, so you’d best say your goodbyes while I get my horse ready. I’ll meet you in the stables.” Putting word to action, Nefna strides through the door, leaving Odase, Razea, and Julian the only occupants of the tavern. It shouldn’t be so emotional. By rights, they’ve only known Julian for the breadth of a day, and most of that time was spent asleep last night. Still, Razea’s heart is heavy in her chest, and looking at Odase, it's apparent she feels the same.

“Hey,” Odase says, kneeling in front of Julian, “You’ll be okay kid, alright? You stick close to Nefna, and she’ll get you to your mom just fine.” Julian nods, grabbing both of them around the neck in a snotty hug. Razea is used to being slobbered on by little ones so she just laughs, thumping his back solidly.

“Don’t ever stop Julian, ok?” she whispers into his ear, “you’ll get her back, just don’t ever stop.” She pulls away, wiping her face, and laughs when she meets Odase’s equally tearful eyes. Gods but what saps they are.

They take Julian to Nenfa, watch her settle him comfortable in the saddle and then wave until they’re no longer in view, traveling down the road towards Redania. Finally headed home.

* * *

_On the Road North:_

They travel for three days, during which Nefna reveals herself to be a generally soft person under a healthy dose of skeptical gruffness and Julian decides that traveling is simply the absolute best way to spend his days. There is so much to see of the world as the pass through it, and sometimes Nefna will hum little tunes and she’ll teach Julian the words if he asks very politely and she doesn’t yell at him when he sings, and sometimes will even sing along. They ride the horse during the day, and sleep around a campfire at night, and everything is wonderful and exciting and if he misses Razea and Odase sometimes well, it’s okay because he is getting closer and closer to his mum, and of course she will help him post a letter and then they can visit, so that’s okay then. He doesn’t think about it, preferring instead to memorize the songs that Nefna teaches him.

Nefna, for her part, is happy to keep the child occupied with singing little ditties, as it frees her up to keep an eye out for bandits and scouting parties of either army. They’re traveling through the thick of it now, that no man’s land where the Northern Armies are repelling the Nilfgaardian forces in small bouts, and where scouts from either side are trying to gather intel on the opposing forces. This is a black-market supply route, so it’s nominally safe from the war front, but she’s running the risk of being robbed for the goods in her saddlebags. She doesn’t think it likely, she’s not advertising her wares, and having a child with her makes her look more like a straggling refugee than a smuggler of sugar and tea. It was weirdly fortuitous to run into the kid when she did, and she’s only a few days away from finishing her last run before she can retire on the fortune she’s earned in smuggling, and buy an inn of her own to manage. She’ll have to ditch the kid of course, but she’ll be nice and leave him in a town instead of the actual wilderness. She’s not a monster, she’s just got no room for stowaways, and anyways she had never actually been headed north enough to get to Redania. This is actually more kind than she’s been called on to be for quite a while she thinks, and anyways, he’s cute enough that some kind lass will fall over themselves to help him. It’s no crime, she thinks, as they come up on the first town behind the Northern Armies line. He’ll be fine, she thinks, as she sends him into town on a fool’s errand, naught but a tiny knife and three little coins, enough of a sacrifice to convince him she really did want him to get her a bag of apples. His little head goes weaving into the crowd and she turns the horse and heads east, content to wait until after she’s dropped off her wares to restock. She’ll have all the coin she needs after that. She takes off down the road and the last she thinks of the boy is as she looks at the sky, the blue stretching out in all directions promising fair weather and a kind enough journey for both of them— she’s sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, my eternal gratitude to you all for indulging me in this, I am having a very frustrating blast (writing just be like that) and your comments and kudos and bookmarks and subscriptions are keeping me motivated. 
> 
> Also credit where credit is due: I got these names from [here](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/witcher.php)


	3. the wilderness is all I've ever known (am i the only one without a home?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I was writing this I thought to myself, okay, you can post it at 5,000 words. Then I hit that and thought, okay wait not done yet, post at 6,000. Then I hit that and thought, oh Jesus, please let this chapter be done soon, and after another thousand words of writing I bring you this 7.6k chapter of PLOT. and some angst I think, and fluff, but mostly plot. Enjoy!
> 
> Chapter title from Lonesome Wolf by Dawson Hollow

Before her agency is wrested away from her by a bard and his idiot witcher, before Yennefer discovers the gilded cage that is Aretuza, before her conduit moment, Yennefer is born with a twisted spine and purple eyes, and she is marked as other. She is Yennefer of the Pig Yard, is Yennefer Not Spoken Of, is Yennefer Who Inspires Fear and Pity and Disgust.

Yennefer doesn’t waste time ruminating on this past; she has had her vengeance and laid it to rest—Yennefer with the twisted spine does not exist anymore, and that’s the way it should be.

* * *

Grażyna is screaming under a new moon when Yennefer is born. The labor is hard and long and the mid-wife is worried. It’s an ill-omen to be born under a new moon, and the pregnancy has already been fraught with troubles. The poor woman hasn’t told them who the father is, and this bastard child may well kill Grażyna. Geile is a practical woman: she knows already that she doesn’t have the skills to save her if things go wrong. As the hours tick by and the labor continues, she knows that she needs help if either life has a chance of surviving this night.

She pushes Grażyna’s sweaty hair off of her forehead and smiles gently, “Grażyna,” she says, “I’m sending my girl for the hedge-witch— do you have coin to spend?” It’s an ugly truth about witches and witchers and sorcerers alike: those with power do not give it out for nothing. Geile could maybe cover in a pinch, but she has mouths to feed also. Grażyna wails, screaming on another contraction, before she nods tiredly, bobbing her head continuously even as Geile shifts to better support her back.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Geile croons, tipping her chin at her apprentice in the corner to get the daft girl moving. “You’re awfully young to be in such a spot,” she wets the rag again, in the bucket by her foot, and smooths it across Grażyna’s brow.

“They killed him, they killed him,” Grażyna cries, overwhelmed and strung out on the pain and exhaustion of a full day’s and a half labor. Geile hopes the hedge-witch is speedy and not too upset at being pulled from her home so late in the night. The way Grażyna is deteriorating does not bode well for the babe.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Geile offers, dunking the rag in the water again. The babe is stuck, twisted out of position and it’s a wonder neither one has died yet. “It’s going to be okay, the witch is on her way.”

“No, no, no,” Grażyna moans, ducking her head underneath Geile’s chin, “I’m going to die,” she gasps, struck with the sudden consuming knowledge of her fate, “and this thing is going to be what kills me!”

“Oh, hush!” Geile says, feeling close to tears herself. She’s seen hard births, and delivered more dead babes than she can count, but she knows no good comes of tempting fate by making such definitive statements outright, no matter how upset you are. “The witch is coming, she’ll take care of the babe, and you too. Just hold on, Grażyna, just hold on.”

* * *

(In Aretuza Yennefer finds more than just her own power. Tissaia, who bought her for four marks, who calls her piglet, who saves her from herself—Tissaia who watches, always looking for weakness, looking for the fault lines that will lead to breaking, Yennefer is a cracked and broken thing when Tissaia finds her, and it is Tissaia who pushes them into folding. Yennefer finds clarity in the stone halls, standing over the transformed body of her only friend, watching the Chaos light up as each conduit is pushed into the swirling waters. Her own face, reflected back at her, flashes strangely as the light shifts, disappearing as she turns to face Tissaia instead. A moment: suspended between them and Yennefer understand more here than she ever has before: There is power in breaking—in controlling the break. Tissaia knows this better than any of them)

* * *

It’s a mercifully short, but horrendously miserable wait for the hedge-witch, who arrives just as the moon reaches its zenith in the night sky. She forces Geile and her apprentice out of the house where they had been working, shouting wildly. Geile doesn’t trust magic, really. No good can come of bending the universe to do what mere humans want, but she’ll allow it tonight, if only Grażyna and the child both survive to see the morning. They don’t hear from the witch again until that strange hour when the moon is gone but the sun has yet to rise. She stumbles out of the small house and nearly trips over the apprentice where she’s laying on the ground, half asleep.

“Oh, you’re still here?” the witch asks, voice lilting pleasantly. She’s got magic, everything about her is pleasant. It’s.... unnerving, Geile thinks, which is part of why she avoids speaking to the hedge-witch (and in fact, is why she still doesn’t know her name) even though they often serve the same function for their tiny village.

“I’d never leave a mother before the babe was safe, what do you take me for?”

“I don’t take you for anything. I was just surprised,” she says, stepping delicately over the apprentice, who pulls her legs in to her chest to get out of the way. “Both mother and child are alive. Though I’m afraid that’s where the good news ends.”

‘What do you mean?” Geile asks, still trying to decide if the witch’s first statement counts as an insult or not.

“See for yourself. I’m done here.” And so saying, she leaves, much more sedately than she had arrived.

They don’t waste time, nearly scrambling over each other to get back into the tiny room. Grażyna is weeping, curled over the bundle in her arms. If the witch hadn’t already declared the child alive Geile would have thought it dead.

“Grażyna, oh, it’s okay,” she rushes over to comfort her, ignoring the babe. It’s alive and that’s enough for now. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“It’s a monster!” Grażyna wails, “my baby’s a monster, Geile, look!” she holds the bundle out to Geile, who nearly fumbles it as she tries to pull back from where she’d been leaning over Grażyna.

The bundle is warm, a good sign. Geile has seen births go every way a birth can go, and she’s familiar with the sudden drop in mood that certain mother’s experience. It’s not the first time she’s ever taken care of an infant for a spell before the mother was in the right mood to love it, and already she’s thinking of a list of supplies to give to her apprentice. Infants are so needy. She flips the blanket away from the baby’s face and straight away flips it back over. Those are the devil’s eyes staring back up at her, purple as any demon she’s ever been warned about. Revulsion shivers up her back and she all but throws the baby back at Grażyna.

“What have you done, woman, to be cursed with such a thing?” she shouts, picking up her skirts and tossing prayers up at Melitle to save her soul. To be crossed by such evil is no good, and her fear is spreading to her apprentice, who even without having seen the monster is packing up their supplies from earlier.

Grażyna wails, clutching the bundle against her chest, and Geile and her apprentice flee into the dawn, driven by fear and revulsion in equal measure.

* * *

(Yennefer doesn’t know this story—not in any concrete way. But a child’s heart is like water—it remembers where it has been, and where it has been denied; always it is seeking to return.)

* * *

When Yennefer is small and crooked and aching to be loved, she lives in the pig shit and the dark and she grows like a mushroom: flattened, kept small and low to the ground, unexpected. She lives under her mother’s protection, and calls it love—a love which will not linger, a love which holds itself in tightly and does not touch. She has siblings, who run and play and are touched and touch in return and she watches, quietly, from her pig yard and she catalogues the differences. She can do these things, she thinks, watching her brother grumble as he carts the pig’s slop in its oversized bucket to the trough. He grumbles and does it and is rewarded with a hand in his hair, her mother’s kindness brushing away his bad mood as he runs off to pay with her other siblings. She will do this and she will be loved and all the crooked parts of her will not matter.

* * *

She wants to help, when she picks up the flower, knows the value of helping, has seen it earn her siblings’ extra kisses pressed to sweaty foreheads, kind smiles directed their way. She wants to help, and for this desire she is punished—first attacked, then sold for less than half of a pigs’ price. If they do not want her help when it is offered freely then she will make them beg for it. They will know the value of her before she is done with them.

* * *

As her erstwhile father’s heartsblood pumps over her hand and the hilt of her dagger she stares into his eyes and demands to be seen. Her mother wakes up on half a scream, and in the shattered silence of the new moon night, closes her eyes to accept her fate. She knows the sins she has committed—is fully prepared to die for them. But a child loves the mother first and always, and Yennefer, though they have told her she is, is no monster.

* * *

The heart, like water, remembers always. Yennefer wanted everything and this is no different. She will be loved, the way she loved, and damn anyone who stands in her way.

* * *

It’s been maybe a month since Yennefer unleashed her Chaos to hold back Nilfgaard at Sodden Hill, and her body aches still with the remembered power. It feels at times like all of her magic is pulsating, trapped beneath her skin, burrowing in between bone and muscle and filling the spaces in her body near to bursting so that some days she wants to claw her own skin open just to let it out. And then, other times it is like she has no magic at all, devoid and empty, a useless husk of the powerful sorceress she once was. Those days are almost worse, though they certainly come with less physical pain. It’s an empty, magicless day as she rises, still weak from yesterday’s burning. At least with no active pain she has the energy required to go into the shitty little market of the shitty little town she’s convalescing in. After Sodden she’d woken up just outside of this little backwater with no clear memories of having moved there; she’d only had enough energy to limp into the nearest building and collapse onto the first soft surface before she passed out and slept for what felt like a full day based on how starved she was the next time she woke. It’d been a slow and painful healing process in the intervening time, but she’d made a half-decent life for herself here. She’d always been a survivor and being stranded without being able to rely on her magic is no true challenge: it’s more annoying than anything.

The market is hardly large enough to be called a market, but there’s a man selling bread and cheese who’s willing to trade with Yennefer for herbal tinctures and ointments to treat his family’s various illnesses, and right now that’s enough for her.

She’s got a basket full of bread and cheese on one hip and is trying to decide if she should bother attempting to also pick up meat from the butcher when she’s bumped into by a street rat. She feels the slight tug of a knife cutting through the belt where she has tied her purse, but though the street rat is fast, she’s faster. She has his grubby little wrist caught in her hand even before the purse has dropped from her belt.

“What do you think you’re doing, child?” she asks, yanking his wrist up so he has to scramble to stay standing.

“Let go of me!” he shouts, dropping her purse so he can try and twist her fingers off of his other arm. She shakes him to dislodge his attempts, and he huffs moodily before going dead limp, forcing her to drop him several inches back to the ground, unprepared for the extra weight. She doesn’t let go of him but only just. He glares up at her spitefully, his eyes a shocking shade of clear cornflower blue and quite unintentionally she thinks of the fucking bard that followed Geralt around everywhere, though it’s been more than a year since she’d last seen either of them.

“You should pick better targets, rat. Can’t you spot a mage?” she asks, ignoring her stray thoughts of the bard, though this child’s face does have the same foppish, pouting innocence to it that the bard’s did.

“You don’t have any magic, witch, or you’d have already turned me into a bat. Just let me go!” He tries to jerk his arm out of her grip again, but she holds him fast because that’s a Redanian accent coming out of his mouth and there’s no real reason for a boy from Redania to be stealing to survive in a market this far from his homeland.

“Where are you from, you little wretch?” she asks, already more invested in this than she’s been in anything since Tissaia asked her to stand against Nilfgaard. This child is familiar, and she’s seen enough of the world to know that when something is interesting it’s always worth tracking down.

“I don’t have to tell you anything!” he shouts, giving another almighty yank to try and release his arm. It almost works, but she catches him by the back of his shirt before he’s taken more than a step, essentially scruffing him. She readjusts the basket on her hip, a little surprised she’s managed to keep hold of it in all the kerfuffle.

“You may not have to, but I can’t very well help you without more information, and if you run off I will track you down so don’t even try it.” She says, trying to soften her tone. She’s certain beyond measure that this child is related to the bard in some way, though she can’t imagine he knows his little bastard is apparently on his own and stealing to survive. How cruel the world is, that children can be born so easily to those who would abandon them, and yet her womb is barren, a choice ripped away from her before she could really make it.

“Julian.” He says finally, glaring up at her with all the hate apparently available in this child’s tiny body.

“Julian, that’s it? You’ve no place to claim?” she asks, certain she’s heard that name before in relation to the bard. Why does this child seem so familiar?

“Not anymore.” He answers, jutting his chin out as if challenging her.

“That’s all well and good, Julian, but I need to know your full name if I’m going to get you back home.” Maybe he’s been displaced by the armies marching. He certainly wouldn’t be the first innocent casualty of this damnable war. He remains mulishly silent for another minute or so before Yennefer’s patience runs out. She shakes him and he relents finally.

“Julian Alfred Pankratz.” He near mumbles, kicking the ground and tucking his chin against his narrow little chest. The name has stunned Yennefer silent because she knows now why it’s so familiar. That fucking bard, he’d introduced himself using that name to the fucking dwarf on that mountain. He’d just up and abandoned a child to which he’d given his full name? Oh, she really would murder him for this.

“Are you not the second with that name? Where’s that fucking bard got off to then, that he couldn’t bring you along?” She crouches down to meet his eyes, attempting to soften her position with the child. She sets her basket down and moves her hand from holding him still to just resting against his shoulder, wanting him to believe her when she says she’ll help.

“No? I’m the only one of me. What bard?” His disposition has changed drastically from when she first caught him and he seems almost excited to be talking to her now. “I want to be a bard! Do you know one?” A deeply unsettling thought is dawning on Yennefer, and it’s only compounded as the child steps closer to her. She can suddenly smell the thick layer of magic that’s absolutely smothering him, like ozone and unrestrained power. _Fuck_.

“Yes, I know one.” She might be talking to that very bard right this second if her suspicions are correct. “Where’s your mother, Julian? How’d you come to be in this backwater?” To her horror, Julian’s eyes fill with tears before he drops his head to hide the evidence of his grief. He kicks at the ground and tucks his little hands into the front of the shirt he’s wearing, which now that Yennefer is actually looking, is definitely sized for a fully grown adult, not this tiny child in front of her. “I don’t know where she is,” he mumbles again, his voice so quiet Yennefer has to strain to hear it. “But I’m going to find her!” He suddenly rallies, eyes flashing as he raises his head and voice. “That’s what I’ve been doing, I’m going back to Lettenhove and I’m gonna find her on the way ‘cause she’s definitely looking for me, I know she is.”

As a rule, Yennefer doesn’t like the bard. He’s the one that brought Geralt into her life, for all the heartbreak and sorrow that wrought, and he has always been deeply unpleasant, though sometimes entertaining, whenever they crossed paths prior to this. But even she is not immune to a child’s charm, and this little one is desperately in need of help. This magic is strong, and there’s no good reason that Jaskier would have been subjected to this kind of transformation. This kind of magic is banned by both Ban Ard and Aretuza: only someone operating outside of both would have been able to accomplish it, and someone extremely powerful on top of that.

As much as Yennefer doesn’t want it to be true, it seems likely that Fringilla did this or was involved in some capacity at the very least. For what purpose? What use is the bard like this? Why would Nilfgaard waste their time on transforming a common bard into a child? Yennefer can’t answer these questions, but she can feed little Julian, and at least keep him safe until she can undo this magic and give him back his stolen years. She’s not a monster, and she’s the poor bard’s only hope. As faulty as her magic currently is, it might take longer, but then, she thought, looking at the poor boy, would it be so bad to spend time with a child? She wanted to be a mother, and here destiny was giving her a chance to practice. Right?

Mind made up, she stood, grabbing both her purse and the basket off the ground. She held one hand out to Jaskier— to Julian. “Come now, little one, if you’re so hungry you would steal I can’t imagine the search is going well. I’ll feed you and help you look.”

He looks at her hand both like it will strike him and like it is his salvation, and she waits with her heart in her throat for him to decide. This will be so much easier if he comes willingly. Hesitantly, he puts his little hand in hers and looks up at her with those shockingly blue eyes. She smiles to encourage him, and then is nearly blinded by his returning smile. His whole little face lights up and she has to look away from the pure honesty of the trust and fledgling devotion looking up at her. Gods, fucking bards.

“Right,” She says, clearing her throat, “on we go, then. I’ve still got meats to acquire. I’ll even let you pick them out.”

* * *

They get back to the little cottage that Yennefer is calling her temporary home in little time, but the entire way Julian is quiet. It’s so unlike what Yennefer would have expected from the bard she knows that she almost doubts her conclusion. The ozone and lightning scent of the magic surrounding him is too strong to ignore though, and frankly quiet or not, there’s no mistaking those eyes. He’s spent the entire walk staring up at her in a kind of quiet awe, which is both flattering and strangely unsettling. She’s not entirely sure she deserves the way he’s been looking at her, or that she can meet whatever expectations he has.

“Here,” she says, as they step over the threshold, “put that on the table.” Obediently, he takes the basket from her, and as he sets about taking it to the long table in front of the fire, she goes into her bedroom and grabs her Xenovox. She pauses, unwilling perhaps to make the call. She _should_ contact Geralt. After all, it was his bard that was currently a child in her home, and at the very least he might be interested to know that. Although, it didn’t really make sense that the bard should have encountered Nilfgaard, unless Geralt had also been captured? Killed? But for what purpose. She would have known if he’d been killed, that damn djinn-wish would ensure that much at least. No, he was fine. Which meant he must be looking for the bard then, and loathe as she was to admit it, she had a duty to let him know that she had found him. _Fuck_. Was this the djinn-magic again, forcing her to cross-paths with him against her wishes?

_Fuck that_ , Yennefer thought, slamming the Xenovox back down on her nightstand. If the djinn-magic wanted to fuck with her it would have to do so on its own; she refused to help it. Either Geralt would come for his bard, or she would fix him and send him on his way. Decided, she goes back into the kitchen and finds Julian unpacking her basket and getting his grubby little hands in everything.

“I see your impudence started young then, bardling.” He flinches back, startled by her words, and drops the hunk of bread he’d been tearing from one of her loaves. He snatches it up, just as quickly and shoves it in his mouth, meeting her eyes defiantly. What a strange mix of confidence and fear in this child.

“You said you would feed me,” he says, speaking around his mouthful of bread. She smiles, more charmed than she’d like to admit.

“I did say that little one, but I’d rather thought we’d make a full meal of it, not just stuffing our faces like little piglets.” Tissaia’s voice echoes somewhere in the annals of her history, but she ignores this, moving forward to finish his bastardized unpacking of her market spoils. She lays out some dried meats and the rest of the loaf that Julian has already ripped, adds some of the soft cheese to round it out, and then, gathering it all up in a little pouch, bids him to follow her as she walks out to the back garden. It’s little work to get the blanket set up, and they sit down underneath the autumn sun, amongst the herbs and flowers that Yennefer needs for her potions, and some that were planted before she arrived.

Yennefer lets the boy eat his fill, content to wait him out.

* * *

_Interlude the First—Somewhere in Kaedwen:_

Geralt huffs angrily, brushing his wet hair away from his eyes. They’ve been traveling non-stop for the last two days, spooked by rumors of Nilfgaard behind them. Ciri is quiet, hunched over Roach’s neck but she keeps jerking upright, clearly half-asleep and on the verge of succumbing. It’s been raining since mid-day, and normally Geralt would have stopped to wait it out, but they need to reach Kaer Morhen without being caught— he’s more cautious with Ciri now traveling with him, unwilling to risk her life.

They’ve only been traveling together a few weeks, but already Geralt cares for her; her tale of being chased ragged across the continent by Nilfgaard enough to convince him the keep is the only safe place for her. He hadn’t realized their interest in her was so personal, so enduring— it doesn’t really make sense, not yet, but it’s not Geralt’s job to understand nobles anyways, and certainly he’s never understood mages either. The moon shines overhead, lighting their path, and Geralt ducks his head down to keep walking. They’ll be in Kaer Morhen in just under a fortnight if things go well, he can try to unravel their motivation then. For now, there is a path to be walked, and a child to protect.

* * *

When Julian has eaten everything they brought out with them, he flops backwards dramatically, starfishing across the blanket. She laughs, unable to stop herself, taken aback slightly by the sudden comfort he’s displaying around her. What does she know of children though? Perhaps this is typical. He tilts his head back to look at her, blowing obnoxiously to shift his fringe out of his eyes, and he smiles tentatively at her. “Thank you,” he says, deliberately making eye contact. “How are you going to find my mother?” he asks, still staring at her backwards and upside down.

“How would you expect a mage to find anyone?” she asks, brushing crumbs off the edge of the blanket.

“Yeah, obviously,” he sits up suddenly, whipping around and jumping to his knees. “but I wanna know what _kind_ of magic. Is it a potion? A spell? Ooh,” he says, knee-walking towards her. He puts his little hands on her thighs and leans in very close, ignoring the way she automatically stiffens in surprise, “is it a ritual?”

“And what do you know of rituals?” she asks. It’s clearly the wrong thing to ask: he stiffens, going blank and distant in a way that she doesn’t think is normal for a child of this age. “Julian?” she asks, concerned, and as if his name has called him back, the unnatural stillness disappears like it had never been and he smiles, expectant, clearly unaware that she’d said anything. She files the strange reaction away to examine later.

“Well?” he says, when her silence has apparently stretched on too long for him.

Well, indeed. How to tell a child that she’s fairly certain his mother must be dead, given the age of the bard as he is meant to be?

“Magic is more complicated than any of that. It’s much too complicated for little minds.” She says, unwilling to bother dumbing down an explanation of her real plans for the child.

He pulls back, sitting down hard on his bottom as far away from her as he can get while still sitting on the blanket. “’m not stupid,” he pouts, crossing his arms at her. She raises one eyebrow, surprised by the sudden downturn in his mood. Maybe there’s more of Jaskier in this child-sized version of him than she had assumed at first.

“Perhaps not.” What is she going to do to fix this though? Her magic is unreliable at best, uncontrollable at worst, but she can’t actually leave him like this. Can she?

Hadn’t she wanted a child? Of course the desire had started with her womb to be given back to her, but wasn’t this, a child sitting opposite her, reliant on her to take care of it, the endgame of that desire? She pushes the thought away, displeased with herself for thinking it. She may not have any positive feelings for the bard, but she wasn’t a monster: she wouldn’t take away his agency, his autonomy, just because Geralt had taken away hers. Which did unfortunately mean, she realized staring blankly at the pouting child across from her, that she would need to contact the fucking witcher to let him know she had found his bard. That djinn was a fucking wily bastard, she’d give it that.

“Well,” she says, standing up, “our first step is to contact a witcher it seems.” He looks up at her words, pout forgotten for the sudden glee blooming across his face. He scrambles up to standing, crumpling the blanket in his haste to grab at the folds of her skirt. He tugs, excited until she looks down at him.

“A real witcher? Like from the stories?” he asks, smiling fit to take over his whole face. It hits Yennefer like all the joy of the world is shining out of his face. Overcome, she picks him up, settling him against her hip as he giggles, putting his arms around her neck to stay steady.

“Yes,” she says, leaving the blanket where it is and heading back inside to the little cottage. If she is going to lose the little monster in a few days there is no harm in indulging herself until then. It will harm no-one, and besides, the little wretch had been starving on the streets for who knew how long before he tried to steal from her. Yennefer could remember being little and untouched—untouchable. She won’t suffer Julian to feel the same. “A real witcher, just like from the stories. He’s going to help you.” Julian accepts this, tucking his head into her neck. Yennefer aches, her skin pulling tight where his warmth is burrowing into her side. Do all children run this hot? Or is it just Yennefer who runs so cold?

* * *

_Interlude the Second— The Blue Mountains_

Ciri doesn’t talk as much as perhaps Geralt would have expected. He’d imagined that all children were loud and talkative and maybe most of them were, but not this one. This is not to say that they hadn’t conversed. Ciri had told him nearly the whole story of the sacking of Cintra and her subsequent journey across the continent to find him, and in return he’d told her of his own part in the sacking, and how he’d likewise been looking for her—about stopping to help the farmer and how that led to their meeting in the woods. He’d even explained the part destiny had had in their meeting, spurred on by Ciri’s questioning. But one thing they hadn’t discussed was Yennefer— Geralt didn’t want to think about it, and beyond answering Ciri’s question of who she was ( _powerful sorceress—used to know her_ ) and receiving the answer to his own question of how Ciri knew that name ( _heard it in a dream_ ) it had never come up again. Usually they spend quiet nights around the campfire as they travel. It’s been almost a month with her and he can’t help but draw comparisons to the last person he traveled with. Half a dozen times a day he will turn, already prepared to shoot off a teasing comment only to find that Ciri is stood where he expected the bard to be. More than once he has neglected to start a fire until Ciri asked, having expected Jaskier to take care of it. Witchers don’t feel. Not in any way that matters, or would make sense to a human, but even while he still stood on the mountain the pain of losing them both had gone beyond purely physical reactions. The loss hadn’t felt like a left-over imitation. It had felt real and immediate and insurmountable. And he hadn’t seen either of them since. Destiny would bring him back to Yennefer, and probably soon, if Ciri’s dream was an omen, but he had no such guarantee about Jaskier. If he thinks about Jaskier for too long the unnameable thing rises up in his chest so he doesn’t think about him at all. He can’t afford it, not with Ciri to protect. They’ll reach Kaer Morhen by sundown tomorrow and destiny will do with him as it pleases. Clearly, he can’t outrun it forever.

* * *

Yennefer is not the kind to dither once she’s decided on a course of action. Waiting is a waste of time, and pointless besides: what is magic for if not removing the irritants of mortal life? Unfortunately, unseen forces are working against her because Geralt. Will. Not. Answer. Her. Calls. The limitations of the Xenovox have never been more annoying to her than they are now, after five attempts to get through to the damn man have been unsuccessful. It would be irritating even if it weren’t for something to ultimately benefit him. Which has her in a rather foul mood, this the third morning since she’d found the bardling in the streets, and still no closer to either controlling her own magic enough to fix him, (or even determine how they changed him) or to getting the damned witcher to come claim his bard. If Geralt was doing anything less than ignoring her because he was dead, actively dying, or cutting down Nilfgaardian soldiers for daring to touch his “friend,” she would eviscerate him herself for ignoring her for so long.

“GERALT,” she shouts into the blasted Xenovox, hoping that this time he hears her. She waits, holding the stupid contraption up to her ear, hoping for an answer: Nothing. “Fuck!” she screams, throwing it down onto her table, hard enough the lid pops off. If she had her bloody fucking magic under control she could fix it without blinking, could have just portaled to wherever he is in a heartbeat, could have fixed the damn bard without all this fucking waiting! She stands up from the table, blood thrumming with fury, feeling a powerful urge to destroy something that she can do nothing with: There is no magic to release, not today, just weakness she swore to be done with long ago. The chair almost trips her, as she moves around it—she shoves it back in place violently, relishing in the shrieking drag as it scrapes across the floor. A quiet in-drawn breath sounds from the doorway and she looks up quickly: Julian is watching her, half-hidden behind the door itself. When he notices her looking Yennefer has just enough time to catch the fear in his eyes before he disappears from view.

Shame is not an emotion that Yennefer indulges in, and in fact is not one she’s felt since she left Aretuza, but there is no other word for the sudden burning in her chest and the flush in her face. The anger dissipates like ink in water, and she finds despair slowly rising in its place. Perhaps Geralt was right. She really would be a terrible mother. If she has made Jaskier, insufferable twat of a man that he is, _afraid_ than she is no better than the adults who made her afraid as a child. What can she offer to a child? Magicless and useless, unable to even fix one pesky little bard, she has nothing but remembered trauma to offer. What had her own mother done? Watched, silent, powerless, paltry comfort offered too late. But hadn’t Yennefer loved her anyways? Wouldn’t her own child love her anyways? Was that a good enough reason to want a child?

The window sash rising in the other room snaps Yennefer back to awareness and she realizes in a flash of instinctual horror that while she was lost in useless recriminations Julian has clearly been making his escape. She practically throws herself into the room, and her half-formed suspicions are confirmed: the window is propped open, and Julian is sitting astride the sill, one leg already out of the window. They both freeze, caught out by the other’s expression.

“I’m sorry!” Yennefer blurts out—Julian opens his mouth, shocked surprised filtering across his damnably expressive face but he loses his grip on the windowsill and slithers uncoordinatedly to land in a disgruntled heap on the ground, thankfully inside the cottage. He straightens himself out, watching her warily, and Yennefer waits with baited breath for him to settle. He finally does, knees drawn up to partially hide his face, sitting with his back against the wall: he hugs his legs to his chest, and the aching in Yennefer’s chest momentarily steals her breath. She sits down too, dropping heavily to the ground in front of him so that they are at eye-level. “I’m sorry,” she starts again, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Wasn’t scared.” Julian interjects mulishly, muffled against his knees.

“Right.” Yennefer says, “and I’m not a witch,” before she can think better of it. _Fuck_ she thinks, half an instant before Julian _rolls his eyes_ at her and she wants to laugh at his ballsy impudence. “I was just frustrated.” She thinks to say, wanting to explain, to ease whatever he is worried about.

“I thought you said the witcher would help me.” He says, and _ah_. _Yes_. That’s the crux of it isn’t it.

“He would and he will. But he’s not answering my calls at the moment so we may have to try more... extreme measures.” He’s silent for a moment and Yennefer peers concernedly at the boy, trying to see his face to gleam how he has taken this news.

“I just want my mom.” He admits thickly. Yennefer catches tears glittering in his eyelashes, and this is a pain that Yennefer is familiar with.

“I’m sorry.” It’s all she can offer him, not wanting to lie. There is, more than likely, no mother to return the child to. Yennefer isn’t really very well-versed in guessing human’s ages (not anymore) but she’d wager that Geralt at least has known the bard long enough at this point that he’s likely outlived his mother. She needs to find a way to undo this, and soon.

* * *

_Interlude the Third— Temeria_

Triss has been extraordinarily busy since Sodden. Other than a brief period of time to heal the burns on her face, (the scarring is... horrific, but it’s the least of her worries right now— still she has blacked out the mirrors in her workshop) she’s been organizing supply routes and trying to rally support for King Foltest’s armies keeping Nilfgaard at the borders. There’s been no time to look for Yennefer, no matter how much she may want to. So the absolute last thing she expects, as she sits down, finally, to get ready for bed, is for Yennefer’s voice to suddenly ring through her room.

“Yennefer?” she asks, looking wildly for the source.

“Triss! Thank god, I need you—,”

“Wait, just wait, Yennefer, I have to find—,” finally she uncovers the almost forgotten Xenovox Yennefer had given her, oh half a century ago by now. It’s hiding in the pocket of a gown she’d last worn before Yennefer officially left the Brotherhood; no wonder she hadn’t thought of it in years. “Yennefer is that really you?” she says, overcome with giddy excitement. Gods, but she’d almost thought her dead!

“It’s me, I swear, I need a favor of you, can we meet?” Yennefer sounds uncharacteristically hesitant— but..., well no one’s been quite the same since Sodden.

“Of course, what’s wrong?”

“Its... a bit more complicated that I can comfortably say over this distance. Triss, can you,” Yennefer trails off.

“Yennefer?” Triss prompts, unused to Yennefer being so uncertain.

“Sorry, I don’t actually know where I’m at, I just realized. Can you come find me? It’s a matter of... some importance.”

“Of course, I assume the Xenovox will work well enough? You spelled it yourself yes?”

“Yes, I look forward to seeing you again,” Yennefer says, and then as silence filters back into Triss’s room, she lets out her held breath, relieved beyond measure. She doesn’t pause for long though, she has even more work to do now.

* * *

It only takes Triss an hour to find and then portal to her, but it’s nearing midnight as Yennefer finally bundles her into the little cottage.

“What’s the rush?” Triss asks, laughing as she’s bullied into position, standing in front of the table in kitchen, which is spread with all sorts of strange items, herbs and knick-knacks, scraps of paper and at least one empty ink-pot.

“The rush is I need to contact Geralt of Rivia and he’s not been answering my calls. I have something of his that I’m rather certain he’d like back, but I need to find him and I...” She pauses, passing one slightly shaking hand over her eyes, “I don’t have control of my Chaos right now, Triss. I can’t do anything.”

“That’s not true, you’ve gotten me here, that’s something.” Triss says, not unkindly and then continues, gesturing at the table “and you’ve got quite an operation running from here as well. You’re too quick to discount who you are outside your magic, Yennefer.” Yennefer scoffs, uncomfortable wanting to deny Triss’s words but forced to recognize the truth in them regardless.

“Yes well, I won’t be without my magic for much longer but this needs to happen now— waiting for my Chaos to come back on its own isn’t an option.”

“What needs to happen? Why is it so important we find Geralt? Isn’t stopping Nilfgaard more critical at this point?” Before Yennefer can speak, Julian tumbles into the room, freezing when both Yennefer and Triss snap their heads to look at him.

“Yennefer, what is this?” Triss asks, unprepared for a literal child to be in Yennefer’s care: had she kidnapped one? Was it a Child of Surprise?

“This is why we need to find Geralt,” Yennefer says, gesturing for Julian to come closer. He skitters up to her, immediately hiding behind her skirts. “Triss, meet Jaskier.”

Triss blinks, clearly stunned. “You can’t mean the famous bard Jaskier, Yenn, he’s not a child,” she says, stepping closer. Yennefer can see the moment she accepts it, as the scent of the magic which surrounds Julian finally registers with Triss.

“Who’s Jaskier?” Julian says, pulling very cutely on Yennefer’s dress.

“So you can see why this is important.” She says, dropping her hand to rest on Julian’s head. She’s not going to answer his question (how could she?) but she also won’t ignore him entirely.

“Yes, clearly. How comes a bard to be involved in magic like this?”

“I wish I knew— that’s part of what I’m hoping finding Geralt will answer. Can you make us a portal to him?”

“I presume you have something of his to help me?” Triss asks, clearing off a spot at the table in preparation.

“What, is the bard not enough?”

“Unfortunately,” Triss answers even as she accepts the trinket that Yennefer hands to her. “What is this?” she asks, examining the little medallion.

“It’s a gift he gave me, years ago. He hasn’t handled it in at least that long, but I’m hoping it will be enough.” Yennefer lays a map of the continent out in the space that Triss has cleared, plopping whatever knick-knacks come to hand to keep the corners down.

“You know I do so love a challenge,” Triss says, setting the medallion, a metal cast of a bird in flight, on the center of the map. “It’s a little big, so I can’t guarantee how close you’ll be, but I trust you can find him as long as I put you in range?”

“Of course.” Yennefer says, smiling.

It’s the work of a moment and some intense concentration on Triss’s part, but as Triss holds her hand out over the map the little medallion begins to vibrate. The vibrations pick up in speed, until it jumps to standing and begins spinning furiously across the map. It spins its way through Sodden, then Temeria, then Kaedwen: It spins all the way to the Blue Mountains, in fact, following almost perfectly along the Gwenllech river. Finally it loses momentum at the end of the river, spinning out slowly as it comes to rest flat on the map. They both stare it for a further moment, perhaps expecting it to take up its spinning again. It stays inert, and Triss smiles at Yennefer, pleased with her success.

“Well, that’s close enough then. Should I put you at the mouth of the river, or deeper in the mountains there?”

“In the mountains please. If I know Geralt I think I know where’s he headed.”

“Excellent then. Are you ready?”

Yennefer looks around the little cottage, suddenly struck with the impending sense that this will be the last time she sets foot in it. She grabs the pack of supplies she’d put together before calling Triss and then picks Julian up to put him on her hip again. He goes easily, sweetly compliant and Yennefer reminds herself that this is by design, temporary: when he is Jaskier again he will resent her still, perhaps even more for taking these liberties. She should not be enjoying this so much. But his warmth is healing the yearning in her heart for a child, and it does not good to linger over unpleasant realities. It’s time to act.

“I’m ready,” she says, as Triss draws the portal to life between them. She meets Triss’s eyes over around the spinning rip in reality, and hopes the depths of her gratitude shine through. “Thank you,” she says as she steps through.

The portal cuts out behind them and Yennefer and Julian emerge into the frigid Blue Mountains. It's time to track a witcher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely a labor of love for me, but it is actual labor: I struggled with this chapter a lot, and the first draft was lost because my computer hates me. I banged the last 2.6k of this chapter out today because I need to clean my room in preparation for a zoom interview tomorrow but uhhhh, my ADHD ass did not want to start. I have no further excuses though, now that this is posted so! Off to cleaning I go I guess haha. 
> 
> As always, thankful for kudos and comments and bookmarks: they really keep me going! <3


	4. the lonesome wolf is howling at the moon (he's singing out an old familiar tune)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? back with a chapter in less than a week? What can I say comments are motivating as hell
> 
> Chapter Title from Lonesome Wolf by Dawson Hollow

Geralt doesn’t remember much of his time before Kaer Morhen. Too young, too abrupt; whatever the reason, those memories are mostly locked away from him, those that exist at all. But he does remember his mother, Visenna. She had red hair that shone in the light and she used to amuse him with little bits of magic. He remembers that she used to smile at him, and she’d run her hands through his hair when he was playing. He remembers that she left him on a sunny day, and that she never came back for him, even though he waited.

* * *

The Witcher’s keep is deep in the Blue Mountains. It’s not easily accessed, not unless you’ve got the mutagens to survive the treacherous pass. Even the witchers themselves can get trapped on one side or the other if they arrive too late in the winter or attempt to leave too early in the spring. But it’s not impervious. The Sacking of Kaer Morhen proved that well enough. The remaining witchers, those few survivors, closed rank after the sacking—it was they who spread the rumor that the keep no longer existed. It’s been removed from the maps for so long that you can’t find it unless someone shows you where it is. Bringing someone to the keep is not a decision to be taken lightly. Geralt especially has been wary of strangers— he’s not as trusting as Lambert, not as open as Eskel, and so in all the years he traveled with Jaskier he never once took him back to Kaer Morhen. He couldn’t even admit they were friends, some small part of him waiting always for the bard to leave, for the inspiration to run out, for him to tire of the hate and the ignorance and decide he’d be much happier warming a noble’s bed than trudging around after a Witcher.

Geralt is the keeper of many and varied regrets: this perhaps is one of the ones that hurts the least. He’s sure Jaskier would have loved Kaer Morhen, but at least he couldn’t feel slighted for that which he didn’t know had been kept from him. Geralt tries not to think of these things, but they’ve been traveling through the night for the past several days of the journey, trying to reach Kaer Morhen ahead of the winter storms. It’s still nominally autumn, but winter arrives earlier in the mountains, and Geralt can smell snow on the air. They’re very close to the Witcher’s Trail, the only way to ascend to the keep. They should arrive by sundown tomorrow if Geralt keeps this pace. So of course, that’s when the portal opens up in front of them.

It’s rare to see the back of a portal—Geralt’s not seen many, but Yennefer always managed to portal just in front of him, for as dramatic an entrance as possible. But this one emits a cloaked figure facing away from Ciri and Geralt, maybe a hundred yards ahead; far enough they have time to duck off the path and hide, though it’s only because of how well trained Roach is that they can do it with any modicum of stealth. Ciri, used to stealth by now and tuned to Geralt enough to sense danger even when she can’t possibly see it in the scant light, is hardly breathing, even though the figure is far enough away they couldn’t possibly hear her breaths over the usual night sounds of the forest. He gestures for her to stay still, turning to pad quietly closer. He knows enough mages to maybe suspect this isn’t totally random, and does in fact have something to do with him, but he’s not survived this long as a witcher by being incautious. The figure resolves itself to be holding something, and just then it turns and the something in its arms turns out to be a small child. A step closer and as the scent of lilacs and gooseberries floats toward him (tempered by the ugly lightning scent of magic and ozone— the portal, perhaps) he recognizes Yennefer. Beyond shocked, (perhaps a little resigned to the fact that Destiny will have her way with him as she sees fit) he sheathes his sword and whistles to call forth Ciri and Roach. Roach trots up behind him as he strides forward towards Yennefer, who, clearly having seen him, is waiting on the path. There’s something tragically unfunny in that the both of them have children with them now, when one of their last conversations was about the impossibility for either of them. Geralt is not paid enough to take note of these things but he thinks Jaskier would find it “deeply ironic” and he can almost hear the snide comments he would make.

“Geralt,” she says, when he’s close enough that they can converse without shouting “that was simpler than I had anticipated.” Her voice is flat and dry, but he’s still relieved to see her. He’s missed her.

‘Yennefer,” he says back, waiting to see what she’s here for. Ciri gasps behind him, and he half-turns to watch her— she looks wild-eyed with her excitement as she leans over the pommel to speak to Yennefer.

“You’re Yennefer? I had a dream about you!”

“You must be his Child Surprise then. It seems we are well-met.” She bows her head slightly to acknowledge Ciri, but then she turns right back to Geralt. “I don’t care to discuss anything with you beyond what brings me here. I have your bard. I need help fixing him.” She readjusts the child on her hip, and Geralt makes a big deal of looking around her, seeing no sign of Jaskier.

“If you have Jaskier, where is he?”

“Use your eyes, witcher, you’re not so dense as you pretend.” The child turns his head, looking wide-eyed at Geralt, and the stunning blue is what finally tips the matter in Geralt’s mind.

“Yenn,” he growls, stepping forward, but he’s stopped by Yennefer flicking one hand up to stop him.

“I found him this way, witcher— Are you going to help me fix him or are we to indulge in your baser instincts for much longer?” she says, cutting and nasty as she’s ever been.

“Tell me everything.”

* * *

The lightning and ozone turns out to be Jaskier; whatever magic is keeping him a child overpowers everything else, obliterating the usual bergamot and chamomile scent that Geralt has long associated with the bard. Looking at Jaskier as he is now, reminds Geralt painfully of his own childhood. Geralt knows that he was once a talkative child, playing make-believe games and laughing freely, and he knows too that he can’t go back to being that way. He’s a witcher; those true emotions which run so high and fast in humans like he used to be, like Jaskier is, simply don’t, or can’t have space in him as he is now. He’s plagued by pale imitations of real emotion, hold-overs from the humanity which was mutated out of him. He knows this. And yet, seeing Jaskier again, even if he’s a child, when he thought the opportunity forever lost to him, or impossible even, fills him with loss and wanting and grief so overwhelming it can’t be just an imitation of the real thing, or else humans should be laying curled in on themselves wailing out their pain constantly: it had been hard to breathe for an instant, staring at the gentle blue in Jaskier’s eyes and knowing there was no recognition to be found there. This Jaskier, small and trusting as he is, doesn’t know Geralt had pushed him away: had laid the burden of Geralt’s own guilt and poor choices on him, had blamed what is turning out to be his largest blessing, in the form of Ciri, on the bard as “shoveling shit.” Shame made him turn away from them both, feeling as if he didn’t have the right to take comfort in their proximity: in Jaskier being safe, if not whole, alive, if not his normal form. Yennefer refused to talk to him just standing there in the road, so they’ve set up camp just before the trail turns truly treacherous, a short enough walk from where they met, though it felt longer thanks to the careful icy tension between Yen and himself. Ciri and Jaskier had gotten on just fine, and Ciri had been kept busy bouncing her attention between Jaskier and Yennefer, answering and asking questions respectively. Geralt had led Roach at the front of their little troop, scouting out a place they could safely make camp before the truly perilous part of the journey began tomorrow. It’s not until after they’ve eaten a dinner of hare, caught by Geralt, and supplemented by the fresh bread and cheese Yennefer had brought with her, that any actual talking occurs.

“What would Nilfgaard want with Jaskier?” asks Geralt, after Yennefer has relayed the last several days of finding the bard, then trying to contact him.

“I was rather hoping you’d have some clue to that, Geralt. He’s your bard, oughtn’t you know him enough to know his troubles as well?” she answers, quicker and colder than Geralt thinks he really deserves. But then, she has ghosted over part of the problem hasn’t she. Geralt doesn’t really know Jaskier enough, hardly knows him at all if he can’t think of a single reason the bard would have to be involved in Nilfgaardian politics— to be caught up by their court mage no less.

“Maybe they had an affair.” Geralt says, hoping (even as he knows it’s unlikely) that the issue is as simple as that. If it were just a spurned lover’s spat than there was no need to fear further action— anything else would be too terrible to contemplate. He casts an eye back to the fire, where Ciri and Jaskier are huddled close to each other, keeping warm and giggling quietly over some secret games. It’s nice to hear Ciri so lighthearted after the misery and pain of the last several weeks, but it’s necessarily tempered by the knowledge that Jaskier, adult Jaskier, should be the one making her laugh. Not this child version of him, all their years of companionship lost to the magic which has stolen his age in the first place. He hadn’t been able to look at him after that first glance, afraid of seeing fear in a face that had never once displayed it: Geralt could withstand a great many things, but not that. Never that. When Jaskier hadn’t been distracted by Ciri though, his little eyes had found their way to Geralt, unavoidable and unignorable; watching constantly as they traveled. Even now, Geralt knows that he will turn soon to chance another look at him. Geralt turns away first, looking back to Yennefer, unwilling to stomach what he might find in the child’s face.

Yennefer makes a short, irritated noise, still avoiding looking at him by watching Ciri and Jaskier as well, “This is not the kind of magic you pull up in a moment of rage, Geralt. This is banned magic, ancient! This would have required planning, it’s too large for anything Fringilla could have done in a fit of passion, you stupid man.”

“Not a man,” Geralt says reflexively, turning her words over in his head. Something of her phrasing was niggling at Geralt, an uncomfortable realization just out of reach. Ciri is humming something now, just strong enough that soon it will turn into the actual song. It only takes him a moment to place it as one of Jaskier’s ballads, written about a wyvern that left a scar nearly six inches long that cuts almost perfectly straight down his thigh. He brushes his hand over it almost subconsciously, trying to tease out what his brain is trying to tell him behind the voices of Ciri and Jaskier as Ciri teaches him the words to a ballad he wrote himself, not long after the whole affair with Pavetta’s betrothal actually, now that he thinks about it.

“Fuck,” he says, out loud as the errant thought finally coalesces. This is his fault. Who’s the shit shovel-er now?

“What?” asks Yennefer, still looking at the fire, where Geralt has been staring for far too long while he tried to process this new information.

“This is my fault, Yenn. Nilfgaard are after Ciri, they’ve been tracking her since Cintra fell. She’s got power, some kind of magic. They must know she’s with me, and they would have wanted to get to us through Jaskier.”

“Nilfgaard wants your Child Surprise?” Yenn asks incredulously, sketching a quick side-eyed glance at him before looking away. “What for?”

“Her magic, the same Pavetta held. Mousesack called it an ‘immense primal power.’” Geralt answers, turning away from the fire. Jaskier and Ciri are still singing, unaware of what he and Yenn are discussing.

“Great.” Yenn says, sounding very much like she doesn’t think it’s actually great at all. “What a bastard of a situation we’re in.”

He’s missed her sense of humor these long months, and though things are still almost unbearably tense, he can’t help but laugh a little. “You could say that.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, listening as the song that Ciri and Jaskier are singing peters out. There’s little they can do about Nilfgaard wanting Ciri, and the fact that Jaskier is with them is evidence that he’s safe enough from Nilfgaard for now. They won’t get the full story of what happened until he’s back to an adult anyways, so there’s no point in wondering further. “You said I could help you fix him.” Geralt says, when the silence has stretched long enough.

“Mm,” Yennefer answers, nodding thoughtfully. “I did say that. You’ve got a library in your Witcher’s keep with a book I need. Rare edition, only one of its kind, and held onto with... intense dedication by your kin. I was able to read it only once, but after the sacking.... well. I’ve no idea to be truthful if it’s even survived. But I know the answers I need are in there.”

“You were able to loan a book from Vesemir’s library?” Geralt can think of only one or two things that are less likely than Vesemir letting a book leave Kaer Morhen, but the mental image of Yennefer interacting with Vesemir at all has thrown him.

“Not without... considerable effort and half a dozen proxies. I had a contact-of-a-contact-of-a-contact borrow it sort of thing, you know how it is.” Ah, yes, she has claimed multiple times he’s the only witcher she’s ever met.

“I can’t guarantee your presence will be tolerated for long, Yennefer, but I can get you to this book and I can vouch for you until Jaskier is fixed.”

Yennefer snorts indelicately, “Oh I won’t be staying any longer than that, fear not, witcher.” She brushes an errant piece of hair from her face, and Geralt catches her hand shaking as she does it. He frowns, concerned. Something’s been off since she arrived, little things that haven’t added up to a clear picture yet. He’s not sure it’s his place to ask anymore, but he’d almost say she was in pain if he thought sorceresses were the type to indulge in such base experiences, rather than just instantly fixing their ailments. His concern probably won’t be welcome, but he can’t just ignore it.

“Are you alright?” he asks, sketching a quick glance at her before looking back to the fire. Ciri and Jaskier have moved on to playing some hand clapping game now, and for several moments the sounds of their game are the only thing to be heard.

Yennefer breaks the silence by deeply sighing, turning to face Geralt fully for the first time this entire conversation.

“Geralt do you know why I was so angry with you, that day on the mountain?”

Geralt turns to face her fully too, aware that this is an olive branch of sorts and he has to step carefully if he wants her forgiveness.

“You think the way we feel was decided by the djinn, and that I forced you to betray yourself. I...” he pauses, listening to the creak of his leather gloves as he clenches his fists, “am sorry, Yennefer. The djinn wish was a mistake, I know that now, but that’s not what it did. I only wished to not lose you, to save you. There was nothing about feelings, why would there be? It was meant to save your life, not bind it to mine.” In the silence of his confession, words he had wanted to say on the mountain, he waits for her reply.

“Geralt, you can’t know that. It’s magic. Magic isn’t real and anything that stems from it is no more than an illusion anyways. _You can’t know_ whether our emotions are ours, whether we would feel this way on our own or not because you made that wish the first day we met. Everything past that is tainted by that first meeting; can’t you see that?” She exhales sharply, shaking her head, “I am not an object for you to decide things for, Geralt. You acted for me, against my wishes, and then expected me to be grateful. Even now! You think I should consider it a gift that you made the wish, when all it did was take away my choice: I am tired of my choice being taken from me!” Yennefer’s eyes are boring into his own, something wild and desperate flickering in their violet depths. He doesn’t know how to fix this; he can recognize in himself how desperate he is for her forgiveness, and it feels real to him, just like everything Yennefer has ever made him feel has felt real. It’s not changed for him from their first meeting, when she saved Jaskier and bathed with him and then used him to destroy the town. He saved her life, the only way he knew how: he couldn’t have just left her to die, or destroy herself, and blinded by ambition as she was that _is_ how attempting to cage the djinn would have ended. He can’t say any of this to her though, not now, maybe not ever. All he can do is apologize, try to make amends.

He releases the breath in his chest, looking briefly to the sky for a moment. The stars are out by now, shining silver in the sky above them.

“I am sorry.” He says, slowly turning from the sky to meet her eyes again. He loves her, and he has loved her, and the djinn had nothing to do with it, he’s sure. “I would give you your choice back, if I could. I only ask that we fix Jaskier first, and then we can find a way to break the wish.” It’s not enough, but it’s what he can offer her.

“Oh, you stupid witcher.” She replies thickly, as she puts her head in her hands. “I am an idiot,” she says, soft enough he’s sure he wasn’t meant to hear it, but then she sits up again to look at him. “I won’t make any declarations until the djinn-wish is broken.” She pauses, and something does soften in her gaze. “But thank you, Geralt of Rivia. For listening.” She leaves then, standing up to go back to the fire and Geralt stays, watching the stars.

* * *

They start out late the next morning, exhausted from their late-night meeting. If they hadn’t run into Yennefer and Jaskier they would already have been half-way to the keep, but having them both back is enough that Geralt can’t be upset about the delay. Even if it does mean they have to contend with the snow. It starts out with just a light dusting as they pack up but it’s already sticking to the ground by the time they finally start moving. Ciri is riding Roach again, but this time she’s sharing the saddle with Jaskier, both of them bundled up in a thick fur that Yennefer had brought with her. Yennefer is wearing her own fur, and following carefully behind Roach. Geralt is leading, keeping one eye on the mounting snow and another on the path. He’s stepping carefully over a felled tree, and as he turns to guide Roach over the hurdle, Jaskier catches his attention by waving at him. It’s a shy little wave, stopped almost as quickly as he started it, but when Geralt follows the movement to catch his eyes, Jaskier is beaming at him. He turns away quickly, focusing back on the path. The moment seems to have emboldened Jaskier though, because not a moment later he’s asking questions.

“Ciri says that you’re a real witcher like from the stories, but that you don’t eat kids who don’t go to sleep on time.” Child-eating is a myth Geralt hasn’t heard in ages, certainly not since before Jaskier started singing about him. He’s not sure what’s more disconcerting: hearing Jaskier’s intonation come out of a voice that’s so much higher than it should be, or being viscerally reminded once again that this isn’t his Jaskier, that this Jaskier has no memory of him, and that his own Jaskier must hate him after what he said on the mountain. He hums in response, refocusing on the path, and keeping them steady. There’s a few more moments of silence as they continue walking before Jaskier speaks again.

“Have you ever fought a pike before?” he asks, leaning forward over the saddle pommel. “Or a drake? I bet you’ve got loads of stories.” Ciri gently tugs on the back of his tunic, pulling him back into place and Geralt briefly nods at her in thanks.

“They don’t exist.” Half a lifetime since he last said those words to Jaskier. Stories Jaskier should already know, _does_ know, will know again when Yennefer has fixed him.

“Lottie says they do.” Jaskier answers doubtfully. Geralt chances a look back at him, surprised to find him pouting. It’s rare that Jaskier talks of his sister as the grown version of himself. He hasn’t said anything of her since Jaskier’s father died, and what an ordeal that had been. She had said something to Jaskier that had left him desolate for days, cutting short their time together that year so Jaskier could return to Oxenfurt earlier than normal. He’d never gotten the full story out of him, rare enough for Jaskier who often shared stories even over Geralt’s vociferous protests, that Geralt hadn’t pushed. He’d gotten a name, that Loretta was his sister, and that his father had died, and that had been the end of that. When they’d reunited the next spring it had been like nothing had happened.

“You’d trust your sister over a witcher?” Geralt asks.

“You know Lottie?” Ah, fuck, he thinks, but before he can answer Jaskier’s carrying on already, “Lottie knows everyone, she’s really smart.” Geralt doesn’t say anything to that, and Jaskier must get bored of him or of the conversation, because he starts up talking just to Ciri again, and Geralt breathes a little easier, being no longer the center of his scrutiny.

* * *

The Witcher’s Trail is tricky, full of switchbacks and steep sections that are so narrow one misstep would send a mortal ass over end back down the mountain. They’re coming up on Geralt’s favorite section soon, the first glimpse of Kaer Morhen, when the path opens up to the valley that houses it. It’s narrow, caged in on either side by sheer cliffs, stretching up near to the heavens, and just before the turn which opens the path up, the fossilized remains of giant sea creatures reside in the mountainside. They’re passing this vista now, and Geralt halts them, judging that the snow is not coming down so fast they can’t afford a delay to show off a little. He turns back to help Ciri and Jaskier off of Roach, and is surprised to see that Yennefer has fallen several meters behind them. She’s walking slowly, hunched over herself, seemingly against more than just the cold.

Jaskier waves a little hand in his face, and Geralt realizes he’s paused, holding him in mid-air, to watch her approach. Quickly he sets him down fully on the ground and turns back to the mountainside. “Look,” he says quietly, reaching out to brush the rime off of the cliffside. He rubs a circle into the stone with his fist, and then as the fossil becomes clearer, and Jaskier and Ciri both see it, steps back to let them rub the rest of it clear. He steps back down the path towards Yennefer, wanting to have some space to confront her about whatever she’s been hiding.

“You’re in pain.” It’s perhaps not the gentlest of opening gambits, but he sees no reason to beat around the bush when it’s such an obvious truth.

“Astute as ever, witcher, though I fail to see how it’s any business of yours.” Yennefer glares up at him, standing up fully to match him. She’s breathing hard, harder than she should be, and her hands keep clenching and unclenching spasmodically, though she’s doing an admirable enough job of hiding them amongst her furs. Geralt can still see the minute movements and he’s worried. It occurs to him then that he hasn’t seen her do any magic since she arrived last night, save the portal.

“What’s wrong.” It’s not a question so much as a demand for answers, and even before he’s finished saying it he knows she’s going to take umbrage with his tone.

“As if you’ve the right to know, Geralt,” she answers, scathingly cold. “I—” she stops suddenly, breathing out sharply through her nose. “I don’t want to fight. I want to get off this godsdamned mountain, fix your bard, and then be on my way. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t, Yenn—” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“Then act like you believe it and leave me be.” She growls, pushing past him to join Ciri and Jaskier. He takes several deep breaths himself to lose the frustration rising in his chest and stares back at the path they’ve traversed sightlessly. He thinks it strangely fitting that the two people he is closest two either won’t or can’t talk to him.

Geralt knows he has changed. He’s not so deluded as to think he’s always been the brooding bastard Jaskier has so often told him he is, and he knows too, that it was a series of decisions that led him here, not random moments which he allowed to shape him, but rather conscious choices to react or not react or hide or show himself as he so decided. Yennefer’s anger at him is something he invited by making poor decisions in the heat of the moment, he knows this, but he still feels like it was the only choice he had. The lesser of his bad options in that situation, and the irony of acknowledging that is not lost on him. Make no choice and he is punished, make the choice and the punishment is less immediate, though no less visceral. At least he knows the shape of Yennefer’s ire he thinks; he can’t even imagine what reaction Jaskier will have upon seeing him again, and the uncertainty of that makes him acutely aware of just how old he is, how long he’s been fucking up with the people around him.

He shakes off this thought, turning back to join the rest of them. He wanted to show them the mountain, to let them experience the beauty of this place. In the time he was trying to confront Yennefer, Ciri and Jaskier have uncovered the bottom half of the fossil mural in the wall, and it’s the work of only a few moments to uncover the rest of it for them.

“Oh, wow!” the quiet exclamation comes from Jaskier, staring up in complete wonder at the tableaux that’s been revealed. The creature is massive, stretching the full length of this section of the pass, and the shape it makes is one elegant curve. It’s larger than any kikimora Geralt has ever cut down, and Geralt wonders if it ever came out of the ocean that used to be here or if it stayed under the water, living its entire life in the dark and deep of the sea.

“What is it?” Ciri asks, reaching one hand out to trace the imprint of its bones as they sweep down into what might once have been a massive flipper.

“Something ancient. From before the conjunction, when this valley was an ocean. There is history here which predates everything we know about the continent,” he answers, motioning to Ciri and Jaskier that it’s time to get moving. “We’ll see the keep soon, just around the bend.” They settle on Roach’s back again, and he leads them forward along the path. It’s another minute or so before the clearing is visible, an opening of the path where they can see across the whole valley to the massive crumbling structure that is Kaer Morhen. Geralt pulls Roach to a stop just along the edge so Ciri and Jaskier can see the whole of the valley. The sun is close to setting, stretching their shadows across the tops of the trees, limning the crumbling walls of the keep in golden light.

Geralt is not overly taken to appreciating what Jaskier calls “the natural beauty of the world around them,” but this is something he knows to be precious. Kaer Morhen is home, insomuch as anything can be home for a witcher, and every year he comes back he has to pause right here to take in the whole picture, even if only for a moment. Kaer Morhen used to cut an imposing figure in the mountainside, and from here he used to be able to hear the young witchers as they trained— since the sacking the first glimpse is always silent, a stillness which gutted him the first year he returned after, and which gives him pause every time he notices it still. He hopes Jaskier remembers this, when they get him back. He would appreciate the beauty in it, would have the words to do it justice in a way that Geralt never could. He turns away, leading them on. They need to keep moving if they want to arrive before the darkness takes the valley.

* * *

They have to break for camp just after they get off the mountain. They’ll travel the length of the valley in the morning and arrive at midday, just about a day and a half later than Geralt originally estimated. The snow is still falling, though down here in the basin it’s been melting quickly. Their worst enemy as they set up is actually just the mud, which made finding a suitably dry spot to set up somewhat tedious.

Behind him Ciri, Yennefer, and Jaskier are sitting around the campfire; Ciri teaching Jaskier more songs— more of his own songs, of which Ciri seems to have an unending supply and which drives Great away from their circle, overcome with yet another reminder that something is wrong. He’s looking at Kaer Morhen, though it’s too dark for any of his traveling companions to see it with him. The stars above and the waning moon provide enough illumination for his enhanced eyes, and he can track the birds as they flit about the upper battlements. He’s watching a particularly large hawk sitting atop the tallest spire, waiting for it to take off. It’s not true meditation: they’re too exposed for that to be comfortable, but it’s close enough to help center him. An interminable amount of time later he’s joined by Yennefer, coming to stand silently next to him. They stand in silence for a moment before Yennefer breaks it.

“I’ve a confession to make.” He raises his eyebrows and turns to look at her, playing up his surprise. He’d been expecting this somewhat: as the day of traveling had worn on, Yennefer had fallen further and further behind, and he’d had to slow down the pace to let her catch up more than once. It’s obvious something is wrong, but in deference to her earlier unwillingness to discuss it with him he’d let it go, content to wait her out.

She rolls her eyes at him and he turns back to watching the hawk. She sighs heavily before speaking again.

“What do you know of the war with Nilfgaard?”

“What any witcher would know: it’s made getting contracts more difficult,” he says. Then, thinking of Ciri, “and that they want something to do with Ciri, presumably for her power.”

“They want to take over the continent, driven by a greed for power, maybe, something larger possibly. I don’t know yet what part your child plays in that, but I do know the brotherhood took... issue, with this and so a faction of us took a stand at Sodden Hill, intent on stopping them. We only needed to hold them back long enough for the Northern Armies to arrive and relieve us of our post.”

She pauses to take in another breath, flexing her hands slowly in front of her. Geralt watches the way they shake and turns away from the hawk to give her his full attention. “What happened at Sodden?” he asks, when the silence has stretched almost to breaking and she still hasn’t taken up her tale again.

“They were more prepared than we expected. We lost good mages, brothers and sisters, and in order to stop them, before they killed anyone else, I unleashed my chaos entirely and burnt the battleground to its foundations.” Before he can so much as process that revelation she holds her hands up to eye level between them, the shaking much more pronounced now as she lets go of whatever control she had over them. “My magic, my chaos, its unstable now. It comes and it goes and I can’t control it. Somedays it is like the void, hidden from me, and others it burns through me still and I can do nothing but wait for it to pass.”

“Yenn,” he tries but she cuts him off again.

“It’s fine. It’s getting better. I don’t want your pity, so you can stop watching me.”

“It’s not—“

“I know. I know it’s not.” She says quietly into the darkness around them.

* * *

When they finally do arrive, Vesemir takes one good long look at Geralt, bedraggled, worn-down, and with two children and a sorceress in tow and sighs deeply.

“I’ll wager there’s a hell of a story to this,” he says, welcoming them in. Vesemir's easy acceptance lets Geralt relax that final hidden tension that had plagued him on the path here. They’ll fix this. Things are already getting better between him and Yennefer, surely there’s a point on the other side of this where it will be just a hell of a story to tell.

For now, he lets Vesemir guide them into the keep and set them up in front the fire. He’ll get up to help with putting Roach away in just a moment. As Ciri and Jaskier and Yennefer all settle around him he feels at peace for the first time since the mountain. Jaskier will be back to himself soon enough, and then Geralt can work on fixing that too. He’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geralt is not as wordy of a narrator as Jaskier or Yennefer (surprise surprise) so this chapter is shorter, coming in at just barely under 6k. Also you'll note I no longer have control of when this fic ends, so to save us all the not-knowing I've just changed it to be open ended. This was supposed to be 15k in three parts :( It's almost twice that now. (I'm thinking it will have one more actual chapter and then an epilogue but who's to say? Certainly not I, the author.)
> 
> But I'm having fun and isn't that what fic is all about?


	5. through the warmth, through the cold, keep running 'til we're there (we're coming home now)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this took way longer than I wanted it to, but in my defense it was full of feels and thus draining to write. BUT we made it! Without further ado:  
> Title Chapter From: Home by Dotan

It’s been a long month for Julian, waking up to Odase and Razea, then traveling with Nefna, whom he lost in the market, living on his own for those horrible hungry days before he tried to steal from Yennefer using a trick Ferrant had taught him last summer (longer ago than that... how long has he known how to steal?), then with Yennefer, after she promised to take him to a Witcher, then the magic portal which spat them out on a mountain! Julian had never seen a real mountain before (hadn’t he? Doesn’t he remember standing at the top of one, with the wind in his hair stealing the words from his lungs? Isn’t that... real?) and then the Witcher, like out of Lottie’s stories, but not scary, not like Lottie said they were, (of course he wasn’t scary, he would never hurt him, he was... safe. Why did that seem so true?) and now a castle! A real castle like a King or Queen would live in and the fire is warm, is comforting, and his mother will forgive him if it takes a little longer to get to her. It’s been this long already.

* * *

Ciri has been running for so long that by the time they actually get to Kaer Morhen, she half expects that something terrible will happen to send them running again. The urge to take off, to walk on her tiptoes, to be silent and quick-footed just in case, is never very far from her bones. It kept her alive in the weeks it took to find Geralt, kept her moving as Nilfgaard tore through the countryside after her, but now, in the safety of a semi-permanent home (maybe; Geralt hasn’t actually said anything to her about it, but she can tell what this place means to him and she can’t help but think she wouldn’t be here if he didn’t intend for it to be safe enough to stay) the urge to move is fading. Geralt is a steady, comforting presence, and if Yennefer stays then Julian can be the little brother she never had and maybe things will be okay.

* * *

Yennefer knows, deep down in her chest _knows_ , that magic is a baseless illusion; that it is hollow at its core: empty and soulless, and that the only real things are what you build for yourself. This is a truth she has carried with her since Aretuza, screaming alone in a circular chamber as magic rewrote her body into a new shape. The deception is necessary; ugly girls don’t survive for long, and everything is so much easier when beauty is a weapon you can wield as effectively as any sword or arrow. Yennefer has made a life out of surviving, and this is just another way to achieve that goal. Yennefer grows and survives and no one expects her to do either. She will show them they were wrong. Survival is what Yennefer knows; deep down in her chest _excels at_ and fuck anyone who would keep her down.

But she knows too, that _knowing_ and _feeling_ are two entirely different beasts, and neither is particularly given to kindness.

* * *

Geralt wakes up quickly, startled from his impromptu nap in front of the fire because there’s a child in his face. “What.” He grumbles, as his awareness snaps back into place. He’s still sitting in the Great Hall, and the child sitting on his lap and staring at him is Jaskier. As soon as they make eye contact he starts talking.

“Yennefer said you would help me find my mum, but so far all you’ve done is talk to her. She’s really nice but I want to see my mum.” He pouts, folding his arms across his chest. “She promised you’d take me to her.”

“Isn’t she dead?” he mumbles, half of it already hanging in the air between them before he’s really awake. He’s aware even as it’s leaving his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say. He had barely been traveling with Jaskier for a year when that particular news had come through, and the grief from then is nothing compared to the naked sorrow that exudes from him now. Devastation is no small word for the pain writing its way across Jaskier’s face; Geralt has seen grief of all shapes and sizes and flavors— it’s unavoidable in the life of a witcher; coming in after the trauma has been visited upon a place necessarily means that he will see the fallout as he accepts and fulfills contracts. It’s part-and-parcel for The Path and he has seen children cry before, and has delivered the bad news himself that a child is now an orphan. He’s been the only comfort for people in their lowest points and it’s never much affected him beyond a slight discomfort with their overt supplications to higher-powers as he awkwardly pats backs and offers rags to blow noses into: but as Jaskier’s face crumples in on itself and he starts sobbing the full-blown wails of a child whose entire world has fallen apart, Geralt’s chest cracks open too and he pulls Jaskier into a hug in an instinctual move born of wanting to undo the damage he has caused. _Fuck_. He thought Yennefer had already told Jaskier that he was supposed to be an adult, not a child. It’s clear from the way Jaskier is sobbing that this is not news being retold to him; this is a fresh misery.

“You’re lying, she’s not, she’s not,” Jaskier gasps out in between sobs. Geralt closes his eyes briefly against the pain of it, and holds him tighter. Ciri and Yennefer are waking up now too, and he glares at Yennefer as she approaches.

“You didn’t tell him?” he hisses at her, quietly enough that Jaskier can’t hear it over the noises he’s making.

“How was I to tell him, Geralt? What words would you have me string together that could fix this?” she hisses back, just as quietly but twice as venomous. “My plan was to fix him before it came up! What did you _say to him_?”

Geralt growls low in his chest, irritation rising up to take the place of the panic and helplessness of having a crying child literally weeping on him. “What do you think?” he snarls, standing up suddenly. Jaskier is still sobbing, but he’s slowing now, thankfully. There’s an uncomfortable thrumming in Geralt’s limbs, pulsing in time with Jaskier’s cries, and he needs to excise it so he starts pacing the length of the Great Hall. He leaves Ciri and Yennefer by the fire, rumpled from sleep still and conversing about something in low tones. It takes Geralt maybe two or three laps of the room before Jaskier’s sobs fully peter out. If not for the stiffness in his spine where Geralt is still crushing him to his chest he would almost think him asleep.

“It’s real, isn’t it?” his voice is scratchy and quiet, muffled by the way his face is pressed into Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt doesn’t know what to say to that.

In a way, it is real, of course it’s real, but it’s a grief which was dealt with ages ago, that Jaskier has already felt, already experienced rushing over him. Geralt hadn’t known Jaskier well enough back then to have to confront his grief, and though in the intervening years they’d developed the kind of relationship that would welcome it, it had never come back to be confronted that way. Jaskier had purposefully kept it at bay. It feels like a violation almost to be witnessing it now, when as a child he has no real control over its presentation.

Geralt doesn’t answer, lost for words, but thankfully Ciri is there to take over for him. “It’s okay. It’s alright, really,” She’s of the right height to be able to meet Jaskier’s eyes and she’s using that to full effect right now as she smiles gently at him, “It hurts, but it’s okay,” she continues, and Geralt notices that there are tears in her eyes too. “It’s okay because you find new people. When my mom died, my grandma took care of me, and—” she pauses to look at Geralt, then at Yennefer, checking for reassurance maybe, “even though your mom is gone it’ll be okay because you have us now. We’ll take care of you.”

Geralt is briefly struck dumb by the simple acceptance of her words. She’d lost nearly everything of what made her life her own just a few weeks ago, and here she was able to offer comfort to another child grieving a very similar loss. How had he ever considered leaving her in Cintra?

Ciri’s words seemed to have been the right ones, because Geralt can feel the shape of Jaskier’s smile where it is pressed into his shoulder. Jaskier wipes his face across Geralt’s clavicle as he moves to sit back in his grip. It is not the grossest thing that has ever been on Geralt’s shirts before, though it is shocking for how... human the moment is.

“Down, please.” Jaskier says, tapping lightly on the arm around his middle. A little bit bemused by his overt politeness, Geralt sets him down gently, not letting go until it’s clear he’s actually steady on his feet. As soon as Geralt lets go, Jaskier essentially face plants into Ciri, and they hug for a long moment before Jaskier pulls back and walks over to pull the same move on Yennefer. Geralt couldn’t say who’s more surprised, himself or Yennefer. She only hesitates a moment though, before she runs one careful hand through his hair, and then, perhaps emboldened by the way he pushes into it, crouches down to hug him as well.

* * *

What does Yennefer know of kindness? Julian presses his face into her skirts, and she knows that the bard this child grows into will not love her this way; might actively resent her for taking these liberties. She hugs him anyways, because knowing and feeling are not the same thing, and neither is particularly given to kindness; especially not where ugly little girls who nobody loves are concerned.

* * *

Ciri carries her grief like it is a chain, wrapped tight around her lungs. She can’t look at it, not directly, perhaps not ever, for large as it is, how could she ever breathe around the loss of something so monumental as home? Grandmother? Eist? Mousesack? Even Dara, for as short as that acquaintance, the bond was deep enough that his link ties them all together. To excise one would be to have the entire system fall apart: there is no time for grieving on the road, no time to fall apart when every second your survival depends on how quickly you can move, how quiet you can be, how efficiently you can disappear. An entire way of life has been lost and watching Geralt pace the room with a wailing Julian in his arms, Ciri wishes for just a second that she was small enough to be held as she fell apart. When her mother and father were lost to sea, it was Eist who held her up, who paced the chamber while she wept and raged and tried to make sense of the insensible. Eist whispered to her the whole time, and it’s those words she offers up to Julian, when he has calmed down enough to hear them. Geralt doesn’t seem to know them, (has anyone told him before? Offered the truth of all grief and misery? Its fleeting nature the only boon of its appearance?) So it is up to Ciri to soothe this hurt. That’s okay. That’s alright. She likes Julian, likes that he is younger than her, and that he responds to her like she is a sister already. He’s so familiar with her, the way nobody before Dara had ever been, and if this is something she can offer to him, then she is glad of the pain which let her know what to do. _Let it have purpose_ , she thinks, as he leans into her chest, _let it mean something to someone outside of myself._

* * *

_She’s been dead for so long_ , he thinks suddenly, face still smushed into Yennefer’s skirts. She’s been dead since he was older than this, it’s all happening out of order. _Older than this?_ He’s never been older than this, what does that mean? He squishes his face farther into the scratchy fabric of her legs, upset at how little sense he is making. She killed herself with the buttercups, but no, she tucked him into bed last night. He hasn’t seen her in two decades, but no, she drank her tea with him just yesterday. Scenes are flashing across his mind’s eye faster than he can catch them, Geralt and monsters and singing in a crowded tavern, they feel like memories but he can’t have lived them, he’s never left Lettenhove, let alone Kerack, at least not until he woke up on Odase’s doorstep, and just how had he come to be there anyways? Hadn’t there been a potion? A ritual? Magic, the burning peppermint, oh gods, he can’t breathe. Yennefer grips his shoulders, hard, yanking him out so she can stare into his eyes. Her mouth is moving, but no sounds are coming out, nothing audible over the ringing in his ears which is shifting up and down in time with his racing heart. And, oh gods, but his heart is pounding so fast, and so hard, much harder than it has ever worked before, is he _dying?_

Panic reaches up and tangles in his lungs and there isn’t any air, _why is there no air?_ He scrabbles desperately at his own throat trying to pull away whatever is choking him but Yennefer grabs his arms, holding them in front of him as he pants with his whole body, and still her mouth is moving. _What is she saying?_

No, not saying, singing. She’s singing. The ringing fades and he can hear suddenly, "Uśnijże mi, uśnij, choć na gołej ławie, mamusia precz poszła, tatuś na Orawie. Uśnijże mi, uśnij, albo oczki zamruż, bo ja cie wyrzucę z kolibecki na mróz.”[1] Yennefer is singing the old tongue to him, the slow lullaby his mother had sang him to sleep with so rarely when he was a child. Last night? Hadn’t she sung it to him recently? He finds himself humming along, slowly, needing to pause every time his breath hitches as he tries to get it back under control. She continues to sing the last half of the lullaby, and slowly he realizes the panic has gone and that he’s humming along with her. 

Yennefer pauses the song to take a breath and the rest of the room comes back into existence. She’s sitting in front of him on the furs they had slept on, still holding his wrists, though her grip has loosened so she’s mostly just cradling them. Behind her Ciri and Geralt are both hovering anxiously, watching, and he flushes under their sudden attention feeling stupid and sad. _What was that?_ That sudden panic, the weird sense of time; it doesn’t make sense, but his mouth tastes shockingly of peppermint and he doesn’t want to do anything but sleep for as long as they’ll let him. Exhaustion makes him stumble into Yennefer, but she yanks him in welcomingly anyways. There’s something at the edge of his thoughts, teasing him, but it feels far away; discomfort, maybe, or a sense of something being wrong? It’s too much effort to uncover and he’s so tired he just ignores it, falling into dreamless sleep with Yennefer’s hand on his back, rubbing up and down as she continues to hum the lullaby’s melody.

* * *

“What was that?” Geralt asks gruffly into the silence after Julian passes out against Yennefer’s shoulder. He’s heavy, over-warm, solid. She stands up with him, not wanting to have this conversation sitting down, and he stays deeply asleep even though she has to hitch him up to get a better grip as she rises.

“He panicked, Geralt. Surely you’ve seen that before.”

Geralt ignores her pettiness, clearly concerned about the boy, “Why though? He’d just calmed down.”

“I suspect he’s remembering more of his real life, and having a hard time adjusting. His thoughts were disjointed, I couldn’t get much but that lullaby and a few snatches of what I assume were memories of you, actually. I don’t think Fringilla’s magic is holding now that he’s with us.”

“It can just wear off?” Geralt asks, looking at Julian with such naked hope in his eyes that Yennefer almost wishes it could be that easy.

“No, not as such. The ritual she’s done, the one in that book?” she waits until Geralt nods at her, clearly remembering their earlier conversation about this, “it was meant as a means for eternal youth without all the nasty side-effects of what we mages do. The original form of it, before whatever bastardization Fringilla inflicted upon it, called for the body to be changed only— Fringilla has somehow made it so the mind is just as affected. But she botched it up, because he does remember, little flashes, and the longer he spends with us, the more that magic fails: he trusted us much quicker than he would if he hadn’t already known us.” She readjusts Julian again, ignoring the flickering of her magic in her veins. It’s been coming and going in waves, more spaced out than before, but more debilitating in intensity, and the trip up the mountain has left her weary and footsore: their interrupted sleep not enough to fix the bone-deep exhaustion. She wants food and a bath and a mattress, a real one, but she knows she has to explain this to Geralt’s satisfaction before she can have any of that.

“Luckily for us, our mage friend who created it found he didn’t quite like the results. Apparently, the years it takes off are rather unpredictable, and he didn’t like that his lover was suddenly in the body of an actual child, and not just several decades younger like he had intended. He went on and on about it for several pages, _the fucking ponce_ , before he offered up the antidote. His intolerable whining is the only reason I remember the book though, so thank the gods for small annoyances.” Her magic pulses painfully, and it takes all her concentration not to gasp with the sudden shock of it. _Lilit’s tits_ , she hopes that this portends an end to her suffering. She’s survived things far more immediately painful, but the slow grating pace and the unending monotony of this pain is set to drive her mad if she must endure it for much longer.

“So yes,” she continues, “the bard will soon be himself, but no it’s not going to just wear off. When have you ever known anything to be that easy?” It’s a rhetorical question, but Geralt smiles wryly to hear it and she feels distantly pleased to have been the cause. Her or the djinn? Who fucking knows, but she’s tired of wondering. She decides, just this once, to take it at face value. “I never bothered to memorize the antidote, and the ritual wouldn’t have worked for what I wanted so I got rid of it and I’m reasonably certain the original is still here.” Geralt looks ready to interrupt her so she barrels on ahead before he can open his mouth.

“So,” she raises her voice slightly, again shifting Julian, who is getting heavier by the second unless she’s getting weaker. “Tomorrow we get the book and get back your bard, but tonight I need food, sleep, and a bath, preferably in that order.” But before any progress can be made in that area, Ciri, nearly forgotten by Yennefer even though she’s standing directly in front of Geralt, and looking supremely confused, suddenly cuts in.

“So wait, how old is Julian really?” she asks, looking up at Geralt.

“Jaskier,” he grunts, correcting her, “and he’s...” Geralt pauses, and Yennefer raises an eyebrow at him.

“Do you not know his age?” she asks, utterly charmed by the prospect. Oh, this emotionally stunted fool _would_ have an entirely human bard tripping after him and not know how bloody old he is.

“I know his age. He’s in his middle years.” Ciri frowns at him, but Yennefer laughs, delighted by how dumb this man is about his bard.

“I’d wager he’s older than you think, Geralt. How long has he been following you across the continent, singing your praises?” She thinks that before this started she might have followed that with something nasty about how short human lives are, but with Julian still warm against her shoulder she finds that the prospect seems crueler than she wants to be right now.

“Wait, Jaskier? That’s not Julian?” she asks pointing at Julian. Had they not...? Yennefer thinks back on the past two days and realizes quite suddenly that no, they hadn’t told her. They hadn’t told Julian either, but in all fairness, it wasn’t exactly an easy thing to tell to a child.

“It is, just by another name. He’s normally a full-grown man, traipsing around after Geralt and writing songs about him. He’s quite famous, actually. You’ve never heard of Jaskier, Bard to the White Wolf?” Yennefer answers.

Ciri nods her head slowly, “I sang his songs to him,” she says quietly, staring into the middle-distance. She suddenly looks up at Yennefer with all the overwrought sorrow of any teenaged child, distress written clearly across her face. “I don’t have my books with me!” she cries out nonsensically.

“Books?” Geralt asks, quicker to recover from that verbal slide than Yennefer is.

“His poetry books! He’s my favorite poet and Eist bought me copies of his books last year.” She tips her head back to pout at Geralt. “They were illuminated,” she says mournfully.

Geralt snorts inelegantly and drops a hand to Ciri’s shoulder, turning to guide her down a darkened hallway. “As soon as Jaskier is fixed I’m certain he’d be honored to recite them all for you, no need for books.” Yennefer follows after them, glad to finally be heading to what she hopes is a bed. It’s been a long fucking journey, and it’s not over yet, she reflects sourly, holding Julian just a little bit tighter against her chest. Magic is fake, a hollow illusion, but that doesn’t make its cost less painful, or its price worth paying. She only hopes they can live with what the cost for this may be.

* * *

The next morning Yennefer wakes up burning. It feels like unleashing her magic at Sodden had, but in reverse and ten times as fast. Raw chaos is shooting up her veins and down into her heart instead of pouring out the opposite way. Shattered ice crunches through her arms as she tries instinctively to push herself away from the pain, but a heavy weight compresses her chest keeping her pinned to the bed— she can’t breathe through it for a long moment, stuck between the opposing sensations and then as air rushes back into her lungs she expels it back out in one bitten-off wail against the ache of it all— and then it’s over, snapping away as quickly as it woke her, leaving her panting for breath, bewildered and suddenly, frightfully hollow. She touches her hands to her wrists, feeling out the scars there— scars she kept on purpose, a trace of her true self, the touchstone upon which she built her identity; this new life which she built for herself, on her power, on her merit, on her godsdamned sacrifice. The door bursts open, breaking the thought away from her as she looks up to meet this intrusion. It’s Geralt, staring at her with such naked concern in his eyes that she reflexively pulls her nails out of her skin, rubbing the indents flat again and ignoring the faint wetness of new blood. Geralt watches her do this, but he makes no move to get closer, and so she lets him stew in the silence of his own creation, moving to sit up on the edge of the bed. There is too much vulnerability in lying down right now.

For all Geralt’s flaws, Yennefer would not count cowardice as one of them, so she’s not actually surprised when he takes the three steps to the side of her bed and sits down beside her. She is surprised however, that he waits her out. He’s steady, and calm, and utterly silent and it soothes the ugly thing in her chest that wants to yell, and rage, and quit, until it’s just the both of them, breathing quietly side-by-side, sharing the same peace from her tent before the mountain and the djinn-wish reveal. She softens, and the ugly thing goes away.

Exhausted, she lets her body tip over, until she’s resting most of her weight against him. She drops her head onto his shoulder, and takes solace in the unflinching surety of his bulk: he’s so present and real in a way that most things in her life aren’t, or haven’t been for a very long time. Her breaths have evened out, and they sit in silence for several more moments, before she feels compelled to break it.

“It’s important to me,” she says hesitantly, trying to be careful about how she says this, “that you understand we can’t go back to what we were.” He stiffens, bristling against the expectation that he can exonerate himself, she thinks, so she hurries on, not giving him a chance to speak. “I can’t ever trust those feelings, and besides that, you...” she breaks off, wanting for once to speak gently. She failed with Istredd, to both have what she wanted and not lose him, but she thinks Geralt is different, softer in some ways, and that as long as she is gentle she can salvage something of the utter cock up he’s landed them in. Maybe the pain is changing her, or maybe it’s her age, maybe it’s the fact that Julian and Ciri (and yes, losing Istredd) have convinced her that burning bridges is not something she wants to continue to do. She could salt and burn this relationship, could be mean and vicious and cruel, could use her beauty to make Geralt come chasing after her, make him beg and plead for her affection and keep him leashed that way, keep him distant, unable to hurt her.

She could, but she finds that she doesn’t want that anymore. That part of her, the part that got off on having power after so long without it, has been, finally, soothed. She proved it to herself, to Tissaia. She has power, has worth, has something that makes her worthy of being loved and worth the effort that takes— but more importantly she has the power to love as well. She can be the thing that softens, and not lose anything for it. No one could doubt her now, but more importantly _she_ doesn’t doubt her now. Yennefer has done what no one else has done. And it doesn’t matter that her magic has been changed for it (that she doesn’t know if it will come back exactly the way it was or if it will always hurt, the way it hurts now) because she— the solid core of who she is, Yennefer Not Spoken Of, Yennefer of the Pig-Yard, Yennefer of the shit and the mud and the forgotten-unloved, is not any of those things anymore. She is Yennefer of Vengerberg and she started in the dark, but she will live in the light. Fuck anyone who stands in her way. Including herself.

Geralt shifts, slightly, and she sits up fully, turning to face him on the bed. She waits until he is facing her as well before she finishes what she was saying. “I will not let choices be made for me, or feelings decided for me, and I will not put myself in a situation where any of that can be cast into doubt. Even if we undo the djinn-wish, it would not erase the...” she pauses, watching his face to see if he’s getting it. “You bound me, against my wishes, and yes, alright,” she says, giving in on this point so she can make her own, “you did it to save my life, and we can argue about whether it was necessary until we both shuffle out of this world, but it will not change the fact that it was done without regard for my ability to make choices for myself. I am not afraid to face the consequences of what I do, and I don’t think you are either.” She meets his eyes, that Witcher gold which marks him as other, the same way her violet eyes mark her as other—both of them held apart from the humans which birthed them, and she knows that they have far more in common than they have which would separate them, and she aches for the lost potential. But she is Yennefer of Vengerberg, is Yennefer Who Takes No Shit, is Yennefer Ascendant and she will not make herself less, will not allow anyone to take away her agency and get away with it, and she will not let doubt distract her from what she wants.

“These are the consequences, Geralt. We can’t go back, and forward will have to be different,” she says. The hollowness of her magic retreating, the child surprise that will need to be trained, a world which has shifted, power in the balance and tilting ever away from their side of the fight—these are truths now, where before they were not, but this is one she will write for herself. “I can’t ever forget what you did, but I _can_ forgive you.”

This time, when Geralt moves to speak she lets him. “I...,” he pauses, clearly conflicted. She watches the gold in his eyes, and wonders what he sees in hers. He releases a held-in breath, nodding, breaking eye-contact to look back at the door. “Thank you.... for... for choosing a way forward.” He stands up, and she watches him walk to the door, quickly, but he stops in the doorway long enough to look back at her. “There’s breakfast. In an hour, in the kitchen.” He nods at her, then leaves tapping on the door once as he exits. She flops back on the bed, spreading her arms as wide as they will go. _Melitele’s tits_ , may she never have to suffer through a conversation like that again.

* * *

She does eventually make it down to breakfast. It takes her a bit longer than the mentioned hour, but most of that time is spent trying to take stock of her body and her magic. The sudden pain that woke her, and the rush of chaos that dampened it were shocking but ultimately positive developments. Even now she can feel her connection to Chaos is more stable than it had been, and though that strangely numbing barrier is there, every time she pushes against it, it feels thinner. More like a shroud over her magic than a wall cutting her off from it. This is good news— it means once they find the book, there will be nothing to stop her from fixing Julian. This is good news.

She ignores the melancholy dragging at her bones, and makes sure as she sweeps into the room where everyone is gathered, that her body language screams confidence. No good to show weakness to anyone, not when she can help it.

Julian and Ciri are at the table, bleary-eyed and sitting practically on top of one another while Geralt prepares breakfast for them to eat. Geralt grunts to acknowledge her as she comes to stand next to him. “Have you asked Vesemir about the book?” she asks, observing him as he stirs milk into the oats in the pot.

“You didn’t give me a lot of details, Yenn.” Geralt shrugs, still stirring the porridge, “Might be better for you to go ask him yourself. He’s in the library, eastern tower. I’ll take you after breakfast.” He grabs several wooden bowls and starts spooning the food into them. She takes two to the table to set in front of Ciri and Julian, and then, as she’s sitting down, Geralt drops a bowl in front of her and sits down next to her. It’s thrillingly domestic, and her chest twists uncomfortably around the shape of her desire for this: it’s the child she wanted but slightly to the left, bittersweet for its fragility, tinged with the knowledge that it most likely won’t happen again. There’s been no discussion about what’s to happen after she fixes the bard, and she’s worried that the decision will ultimately hinge on how he feels about her. How the adult version of him feels about her, complicated by their enormous dislike for each other. She watches Julian over her bowl and tries to picture the bard in his place: tries to imagine what that might look like.

It hovers uncomfortably in her conscious through the whole meal, through cleaning up, and through Geralt leading her to the library. She’s so lost in thought she almost doesn’t notice they’ve arrived, blinking back into awareness just in time for Geralt to push open the heavy doors, revealing a spacious room, bathed in light from the open air-balcony. It’s a sparsely decorated sitting room, naught much more than a couch and an overstuffed armchair, centered around a low table, but there are bookshelves floor to ceiling around the entire perimeter except where the wall is cut out for the balcony. If Yennefer couldn’t feel the magic over the balcony keeping the room dry, she might worry over the books’ fates. As it is they’re clearly well cared for. She supposes that must be due to Vesemir, sitting in the armchair with a book open in his lap, and several more stacked up in front of him. She vaguely recalls that he was the witcher who greeted them last night, but exhausted as they were from the journey, and then with Julian’s panic attack, she hadn’t seen him since or really been properly introduced.

“Vesemir,” Geralt starts, gesturing towards her, “this is Yennefer of Vengerburg, the sorceress I told you about.” Vesemir grunts in greeting, holding one hand out to shake as he stands up to meet her.

“Geralt tells me you’re in need of a book.” Vesemir raises an eyebrow at her and releases her hand to sit back down, “We’ve got books aplenty here, though I’m not sure there’s much as can help a sorceress.”

“I know the book I’m searching for already. It’s the journal of a sorcerer who lived for some time at Kaer Morhen: he created the first witchers.” Yennefer sits down on the couch, and Geralt sits with her. “Ransant Alvaro’s _Magic, Monsters, and Muses_ should be in your library. It has the potion I need to fix the bard.”

“It also has sensitive information about our kind. How’d you come to know of it witch?” Geralt shifts like he wants to defend her, but she puts a hand to his knee to stop him. She knows when she’s being tested.

“Several excerpts that were relevant to my interests were released to a professor at Oxenfurt upon Alvaro’s death. I was able to acquire them through... alternative means. I destroyed them of course, once I discovered they didn’t actually have the answer I wanted.” She’d actually destroyed them in a fit of rage when his spell wasn’t enough to restore her womb, but Vesemir didn’t need to know that. Only that the copy was gone.

Vesemir squints at her, weighing her words, before he nods quickly. “Seems sensible enough. I’ll grant you to see it, but only the parts you need. I’ll be in the room with you when you read it. And I won’t let you take any part of it with you. We’ve lost enough to mages and their ilk. Geralt’s word I trust, and it’s his trust you’ll be breaking if you break my rules.” The supervision chafes, but Yennefer isn’t so insensitive that she could forget why it’s necessary in his eyes. The pogroms were led by mages after all, never mind that Yennefer was still being called piglet by Tissaia when they occurred.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Thank you.” She says, pulling her hand back into her lap. Geralt stands up as soon as her hand clears his thigh.

“I’m going to check on Jaskier.” he says, nodding quickly to both of them. She ignores him to meet Vesemir’s gaze evenly. She’s going to get her answers. Everything else can wait.

* * *

Geralt finds Jaskier and Ciri in the courtyard, wrapped up in their furs again and playing some complicated game that seems to mostly involve a lot of shrieking and chasing after each other. He’d left Yennefer in the library with Vesemir, maybe too abruptly, but the walls had been closing in on him, and he’d needed to check on Jaskier more than he’d been needed there. Yennefer could find her answers on her own, and Vesemir could stop her from gathering too many that weren’t directly related to giving Jaskier his adult body back. It would be fine. He settles against the wall, watching Jaskier chase Ciri through the courtyard, and lets his mind wander to his conversations with Yennefer both on the mountain and from this morning. Yenn was right. He’s not afraid to face the consequences of his actions. When he became the Butcher he accepted the name and the hate as was his due for losing control of a bad situation, and time and time again he’s faced up to his actions.

Except.... he sighs, looking at Ciri. He did run away from that particular action for quite a while hadn’t he. And he’d kept the djinn wish from Yennefer, citing that it was never relevant, but hadn’t it always been? All those things he’d blamed on Jaskier—decisions he himself had made and been running from. Unbidden, Jaskier’s face from the mountain flashes in his mind, and he tries not to overlay it on the child Jaskier who cried against his shoulder last night, but he can’t help it. It’s the same pain, the same grief, only this time _he_ caused it by losing his temper. Maybe all he does is run away from his problems. And all along wasn’t it Jaskier, trying to help him? Butting-in and trampling over ground where he wasn’t welcome, yes, but that was just the way of Jaskier. For twenty years he’d been rolling over Geralt’s protestations that he didn’t need a bard, or a barker, that he was fine with being the Butcher, with accepting that people would hate him and there was nothing he could do to change it—except that Jaskier _had_ changed it. Jaskier had written a whole song cycle about witchers and made the path easier for all of them, not just Geralt. And Geralt had thrown all of that away in a fit of anger because Yennefer had broken his heart. Anger at himself rises up hot and fast through his throat, burning, and he grinds his teeth together painfully against letting it out. _Fuck._ He’d really cocked this up.

Jaskier laughs, high pitched and breathless as Ciri bowls him over, clearly winning the upper-hand in the game of chase they’re playing. Geralt lets their laugher soothe the pounding heat in his breast, closing his eyes to memorize the sound. It may be the last time he hears such happiness from Jaskier all winter, depending on how horribly Geralt cocks up apologizing. He’s aware that Yennefer did most of the work in fixing things between them, after Geralt fucked up his first stumbling attempts to apologize, and he can only hope that Jaskier gives him the same chance. Jaskier can be petty, and he holds grudges long past a time any sane man would have forgotten them. Until the journey up the mountain he’d had the same opinion of Yennefer, but he thinks the remnants of the djinn that binds them may have worked in his favor on this. It doesn’t sit right with him, exactly, imagining that the djinn has twisted his wish to put them both in a compromised position when it came to the other. His apology to Yenn was honest, earnest in a way that he’s never really allowed himself to be. He has a weak spot that’s mage-shaped and smells of lavender and gooseberries apparently. Jaskier finally twists out of Ciri’s grasp and takes off running again, and Geralt considers that maybe he has more than one soft spot.

Maybe he can fix things with Jaskier after all—hadn’t apologizing to Yennefer felt pointless at first? And look what it had wrought; things were improving between them, after all, and he had hope that she would stick around: if not for him, then for Ciri, who would need someone to teach her magic. If it took all winter to fix things with both of them, then he would commit to those heavy conversations, would commit to facing his problems head on. He _wanted_ for the first time in a long time, he wanted something for himself. He wanted them. Both of them, however they would have him.

* * *

It was kind of strange to know that Julian was actually almost as old as Geralt and Yennefer, and that he was actually Jaskier, the bard who showed up to sing during at least one event every season growing up and whose books she’d read so often she could find her favorite poems simply by standing them on their spines and letting the pages fall open to where the binding had creased. But then again, nearly every aspect of her life had been strange and getting stranger since.... well, since.

Julian squirms out of her grip, knocking her off of him, and then takes off running for home-base, which is really just the stable and thus out of grounds for tagging. She’s after him quick as a flash, laughing maniacally. She hasn’t had fun like this ever, not even playing knucklebones in the square with the other kids her age. But she’s determined to beat Julian to the target— she won’t let him win, not if she doesn’t have to. She starts running on her tiptoes, refusing to let her heels hit the dirt, and quickly catches up to his much shorter strides. In another instant she flies past him, and she manages to slap her hand on the cool stone of the stable just before he slams into her side and knocks both of them into the hay bales stacked up and waiting to be given to the horses. They land in a giggling heap with Julian’s legs across her torso and they lay there struggling to catch their breath around the laughter they can’t quite suppress. Ciri is so incandescently happy, just in this moment, with Julian warm overtop of her, with Geralt and Yennefer watching over them, with the safety of Kaer Morhen to relax in, she feels hopeful. Like everything will work out perfectly and nothing can stop them. She smiles, and shoves Julian’s legs off of her chest. They both sit up at the same time, and she winks at him, feeling light as a feather. “Want to sneak up on Geralt?” she asks, already planning how to catch him unawares. Julian laughs, and takes off running again. That’s alright. She’s fast enough to catch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Hey thank you once again for continuing to read this, as ever I really appreciate the kudos and the comments and all the attention this is getting. This is officially the longest thing I've ever written and I'm really proud of it and I'm glad to be sharing this experience with you all. :3 (Also pls forgive the terrible Polish translation, I used Google translate and ripped the lyrics from this song: ["Uśnij, że mi uśnij" kołysanka](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIjbG_K9PVU)  
> Give it a listen, it's kind of haunting and I played it on repeat for the majority of writing this chapter.
> 
> 1 Translation of the Lullaby: Fall asleep for me, go to sleep, although on a bare bench, mum is gone, daddy is in Orawa. Fall asleep for me, go to sleep, or close your eyes, because I will throw you out of Kolibecki in the frost. [return to text]


	6. faulty magic (whispered to the mage who could mend)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from Inexplicable by The Correspondents (lowkey almost named this "I think I know what I want (but I don't know where to go)" which would have also been a very good title, but I couldn't resist the wordplay of turning 'man' into 'mage' in the actual title I went with.
> 
> Actually, though, that might be next chapter's title if it goes the way I want it to. Keep an eye out! ;p
> 
> Also, upon reflection, that particular lyric is an excellent descriptor of my writing approach.

The journal proves fruitful— it’s not been more than an hour or so before Yennefer is staring at the answer to their bard’s ailments. It’s... deceptively simple, for what it represents. A potion, a sacrifice, the moon in the right position. Vesemir, hovering over her shoulder and reading along, huffs out a quiet breath that’s half-laugh. “Well, look at that, luck is on our side for once,” he says. 

Yennefer feels reluctant to call the new moon’s occurrence ‘luck,’ which reeks of universal interference, but loathe as she is to admit it, it’s probably for the best they not let Jaskier remain as Julian for much longer. (A tiny easily smothered part of her heart does want her to wait... to put it off and claim she doesn’t have time to prepare the potion— who would be able to call her on it?) Who knows what consequences may come of it. (Yennefer does— he would remember, eventually, and he would hate them, or worse, his mind would collapse under the inability to reconcile the life he remembers with the body he inhabits but they would lose him just as surely either way.) It will only take an hour or so to brew the potion, provided the witchers have a workroom that’s adequately stocked, and maybe another hour beyond that to get Jaskier in position and then— well, and then he’ll be back and whatever the consequences will be, will be.

She closes the book gently and turns to face Vesemir. “I need to see your workroom,” she says, standing up from the sofa. Yennefer is not one to dither when a solution is right in front of her—even when it’s an unpleasant one.

* * *

Vesemir has seen more than his fair share of the Continent’s oddities in his time on the Path, and many even stranger things in the years he was head trainer for the School of the Wolf. It seems only fitting that the strangest yet would happen in what is, essentially, his functional retirement, for all that witchers don’t retire. Oh, he goes out on the path for a little while every spring, while the weather is still good and before it gets too hot, but he spends less and less time roaming, the longer his life goes on, content to keep the home fires burning for when his pups come back. Taking care of the keep as it ages around him, counting every witcher that comes back, keeping an ear out for the ones that don’t. There’s few enough of them left anymore that he finds himself mourning more than just their lives— he’s keenly aware that they are losing their history. The sacking stole more than just boys and the trials from them; it’s stealing their entire guild, a whole people, decimated for nothing more than baseless hate. It would drive him mad to ruminate on it, so mostly he doesn’t.

What he does do is keep their history. He can’t change people’s minds or their hearts, he can’t bring back the men they have lost, can’t do much besides mourn the dead and honor the living: but this—he can do this. He keeps the history. He’s been making copies of journals and bestiaries, painstakingly transferring the knowledge and the personal lives of his fallen brothers and mentors and witchers he never met, all in an attempt to keep them from being lost to time. When he finishes one, he sends it to Mignole, a collector— a friend, really, who knows the value of what he is passing along. She keeps their history safe too. She’s the only outsider he’s ever let see these books, but now Geralt has brought home a sorcerer. And worse, two children, though if their claims are to be believed, one of those children is actually the bard Jaskier, who’s songs have made their Geralt into a legend more than he is a witcher. A not-unwelcome improvement for the rest of them as well, as his songs and the goodwill they buy softens the hate for their kind. So yes, he’s seen enough in his years that he’d rather assumed nothing could surprise him. But as he wanders away from the library, now that the sorceress has found her answer, he is surprised to find two little humans in the kitchens, snuffling around in search of food.

“Have your minders left you alone?” he asks, coming up to stand just behind Geralt’s Child Surprise, supposedly the Lion Cub of Cintra— trust Geralt to somehow find his way into the middle of a political nightmare. She’s head and shoulders deep in the cupboards where Vesemir has stocked his flours and sugars. There won’t be anything for children’s stomachs in there. The little boy is kneeling on a chair, leaning off of the back and watching them both avidly. Ciri jumps, slamming her head into the top of the cupboard, and she’s swearing fit to rival a Skelliger as she backs up and stands, rubbing her head. “Who taught you to curse like that?” Vesemir asks, gesturing for her to sit at the table with Jaskier. It’s not been so many years since he last fed a hungry child, he can handle this.

As he pulls out the ingredients for a cold lunch it’s the little bard who answers his initial question, “Geralt is in the stables so Ciri said we should bring him lunch. ‘Cept we can’t find the honeycakes.”

Vesemir readjusts course slightly to make sure he adds in honeycakes— they’re a special indulgence of his and he knows that they’re Eskel’s favorites so he always tries to have some on stock for the winter. He might need to make another supply run before the snows hit. “I keep them hidden,” he tells them both, even as he telegraphs where exactly his hiding place is. Let them try and sneak in later, it’s a tried and true source of fun for the little ones, now and past. It’s been a long time since there were little ones in Kaer Morhen. He’s almost sorry that the bard won’t be a child for much longer: Ciri could use someone to have fun with. It will be a boring winter otherwise.

He feeds them lunch, and then the honeycakes, and then the bard asks for “witcher stories” and, well. It’s been a long time since Vesemir had such an appreciative audience.

* * *

Geralt had left Ciri and Jaskier to their game, trying to escape his thoughts, and retreated to the stable where he plans to spend the day taking care of Roach. She’s due for new shoes, and now that they’re at Kaer Morhen it’s finally safe enough to take care of the work himself. It’s easy enough to get lost in, and he passes the morning away entirely with her in the stables. It’s Yennefer that finds him, sometime afternoon, startling him when he looks up from brushing out Roach’s coat to find her watching him over the stall door.

“Hello Yenn,” he greets her, continuing to rub rhythmic circles into Roach’s neck. Dirt puffs out in an annoying cloud and he focuses on that instead of what Yenn’s presence means. She leans against the stall door, not saying anything yet, but Roach immediately twitches her ears back in a warning sign. Roach is prickly when she’s stabled, and rather than continue to encroach on Roach’s space, Geralt puts the brush down and exits the stall, gently chivvying Yennefer out of the stable. He stops just at the entrance, strangely hesitant to hear what she has to say. Instead of saying anything, she pulls a small vial out of her dress pocket and holds it up between them. It’s very clearly the antidote, shimmering an iridescent silver, and Geralt and Yennefer both stare at it for just a beat too long before Yennefer shakes it slightly at Geralt. He takes it, and then meets her gaze. Her chin is up, like she’s challenging him to call her out on this strange hesitance they both feel. He won’t though, aware of how paper-thin both of them feel about this.

“Tonight then?” He feels a strange thrill of anxiety— Jaskier back, finally, safe the way Geralt always wants him to be, but also terrified of what he will say to see him, scared that he won’t come up with the right words to ask him to stay. It’s double-edged, ready to slice him to the core whichever way it comes down and he has to consciously relax his grip on the vial before he smashes it in his fist.

“Tonight,” Yennefer confirms, blowing her breath out in one shaky exhale. “It should return him to whatever state he was in before the ritual was completed, so we’ll need to be prepared for the worst.”

Geralt growls, fighting down a sudden swell of anger, “The worst, Yenn? I thought you said this would fix him!”

“Spare me.” Yennefer snaps, stepping close to him, unafraid because she’s always known she’s the biggest bad between them. “I promised nothing but the return to himself, and if you think for a second that I won’t do everything in my power to save him then you clearly don’t remember that it was _me_ who saved him first. What have you done for him that I wouldn’t also do?” Yennefer steps back, breathing hard and Geralt frowns at her, surprised by her vehemence.

“Since when have you cared about Jaskier? I thought you two hated each other.” Because that’s been the truth for as long as Yennefer has been circling their lives, Jaskier going weirdly prickly around her, both of them trading pointed barbs and insults just this side of blunted. Honestly, it’s been half of the reason he hadn’t stuck around for long when they _did_ find her, wanting to clear out quickly before Jaskier and Yenn could start in on their squabbling, not wanting to be subjected to their combined pettiness when in close proximity. Yennefer crosses her arms, staring back at the keep like Geralt has somehow actually hurt her feelings with his simple statement.

“I’m not so much a monster I would let him die, Geralt.” She says finally, looking back at him, eyes flashing with a challenge Geralt can’t name. “Are you going to help me or am I doing this alone?”

As if it was ever a question. “What do you need?”

* * *

What Yennefer needs is a clean room with natural light and enough healing supplies to cover any potential injuries that might be revealed when Jaskier is returned to his adult self. They don’t know how long Nilfgaard had him before they tossed him aside after their experiments were done (or even why they tossed him aside— had they meant to kill him? Had he escaped? Unlikely perhaps, but Yennefer knows the power of being underestimated and she frankly wouldn’t put it past the bard to know as well. No man went around doused in that much frippery without having a strong sense of his own capabilities.)

The room is easily sourced by Geralt, and she sets him to work gathering bandages and a tub of water and various other items and herbs and salves and tinctures. It’s not all necessary but she keeps feeling caged in by his presence and inventing new tasks for him to complete just to get rid of him for a precious few minutes as he tracks down her requests. He’s off right now looking for thread and she’s taking the time to push at her magic again, just to test it. It’s back, if slightly weaker, and slower to respond, that damnable barrier between her magic and her control of it. It’s rather like attempting to wade through a bog, or dragging a cart through muddy streets: she can remember the control and the speed she used to have and yet can’t get around this obstacle that’s been thrown in her way. She’s got the skill but not the same power to back it up. The actual antidote won’t need any active magic to administer it, but the healing afterwards might, depending on what state the bard is in. She wants to be ready. Needs to be ready, so even though it feels as futile as pissing into the wind she continues pushing. What’s a little pain in the face of her desires? When has it ever stopped her before?

* * *

(There is no one to wipe the sweat from her brow, or hold her against their chest the way there was for Grażyna— this is not how Yennefer’s story unfolds, taking comfort from the local midwife, and though Triss would be there in a heartbeat, Yennefer has learned to survive alone— learned to _endure_ alone, and that has made all the difference.)

* * *

It hurts, the more she pushes, a steady strain that is rapidly becoming a searing burn— it feels like tearing skin, the sick resistance as she pushes her magic to its limit rapidly transforming to a sharpened burn. She persists, powering through it, panting with the effort. With one final heave against herself, the barrier pops like a small bomb going off in her body, and magic rushes through her veins with enough force that she’s sure her blood must have been vaporized to make room for it. It’s shockingly painful, at once ice cold and blindingly hot, like catching lightning in a bottle except that _she’s the bottle_ , zinging with the force of containing the explosion. It crackles loudly up and down her arms, dancing over her ribs before singing through her legs, all in the space of a second, so fast she hardly has the time to catalogue it before it settles, leashed, and coiling in the magic-base of her, low in the stomach where all her power comes from. If she cannot have her womb for birthing, at least she has this, has magic singing in her core, power waiting to be called on: all the sacrifice in the world must be worth it for this, the sheer potential of all that magic coiled loosely inside of her. She lies on the ground panting, as she recovers, relearning the way her body feels. She hadn’t realized how empty she felt since Sodden, not until just now, relearning the push and pull of Chaos as she bends it to her bidding.

This is how Geralt finds her, splayed out on the ground, staring at the ceiling like she’s high on a particularly mellow trip. He comes to stand over her, holding the thread and also a small knife, which, she admits, was well-thought of him and was going to be the final thing she sent him for. _Dammit_. They stare at each other for a moment, Yennefer from the ground, Geralt with one eyebrow raised before he sighs shortly, leaning over her body to drop the thread and the knife off on the worktable she’s set up.

“You’re stalling, aren’t you.” he declares, making no move to help her up. She sighs, loudly, drawing it out for just long enough to be obnoxious before she stops, caught out.

“Yes, alright, I’m putting it off.” She stands up, feeling more settled and also vaguely like she really should at least try for her normal propriety around Geralt. Things are better between them now, and she’s slowly coming around to the idea of counting him a friend, the way she counts Triss a friend, but for this at least, she should be standing. “Can you blame me?” she continues, busying herself with rearranging the items on the table for the third or fourth, (alright, sixth) time. She doesn’t think not wanting to bleed a child should be something to feel badly about, even if it does mean they’re losing precious daylight hours. They can’t act until the moon reaches its zenith anyways, so all she’s doing really is delaying Julian’s pain— it’s one thing to accept pain for yourself, entirely another to force it on an innocent. It won’t hurt for long, but it will hurt, and she doesn’t want to see him cry, doesn’t want to be the reason he hurts, not after the panic attack last night, and certainly not after a month of caring for the damnable creature. She picks up the knife, just to fiddle with something, testing the sharpness of it against her own thumb. It’s sharp, enough that she doesn’t feel the sting of the cut until the blade is clear of her fingers. Witchers do take excellent care of their tools, she’ll give them that.

Geralt is waiting her out, all that witcher patience that has driven her mad before but now just feels like space to breathe in. She stills her hands, leaning heavily against the table. No point in stalling anymore: it will be awful either way, now or later. At least if she does it now the comfort can last longer before the final awful transformation. Magic comes at a price: always. This will be no different.

“Get Julian.” she says, the final request. No turning back now.

* * *

Ciri had great intentions when she tried to set out with Julian to get lunch for Geralt, but then Vesemir had caught them, and well, Julian got him to tell them stories of being a witcher, properly bloody ones too, which were way more exciting than the few she’d managed to get out of Geralt. They’re listening to a rather riveting tale of the time Vesemir took down a leshen by himself to save an entire village when Geralt finally shows back up.

“And when I dropped the antlers off on the alderman’s bar top, do you know a bard asked me for the story?” Julian sits up more on his knees, and Ciri leans in too, ignoring Geralt for now to hear the end of the tale. “It’s rare enough to be approached by a human, but one that wants to listen? Of course I told him the whole sorry mess of it, _after_ he bought me an ale.” Geralt shakes his head, smiling slightly, a quick movement that Ciri just catches out of the corner of her eye. “He wrote a song about it, too.” Vesemir says, leaning back in his chair. “See, Geralt, you’re not the only one who’s made it into local legend.” Geralt rolls his eyes, and shoves off of the doorway he’s leaning against coming further into the room now that he’s been acknowledged.

“What’s the song!” Julian asks, excitement making him bounce in place where he’s sitting against Ciri’s side on the floor of the Great Hall. “Maybe I know it!”

Vesemir snorts, and Geralt shakes his head too. He comes to stand just above Ciri and Julian, obviously waiting for them to finish their conversation with Vesemir. “The bard told me it wouldn’t sell about a witcher, so he called it ‘The Knight of a Verdant Sun,’ and I only ever heard it once. Don’t think it much left that village to be honest.”

Julian frowns with his whole face, then looks up at Geralt, nearly throwing his whole head back to do it.

“Doesn’t verdant mean green?” he asks, flopping back into Geralt’s shins as he tries to lean even farther backwards.

“Aye,” Vesemir answers, shifting to get up, “there’s a reason the song never left Burdoff.” He stands up, clapping his hands together before looking to Geralt. “It’s time then, is it?” he says, and Ciri is smart, and she knows that she’s about to be left out of whatever it’s time for, so before they can even think of not including her, she stands up too, and pulls Julian with her. It probably involved him (maybe they’re going to turn him back into Jaskier, which is something that Ciri has been trying not to think about) so her best bet is to stick as close to him as possible so they can’t possibly do anything without her.

“Where are we going?” she asks brightly, and counts it as one point for her when it causes Geralt to frown, clearly trying to come up with a way to get rid of her. Jokes on him, she’s not going anywhere. She’s only known Julian for a little over two days but she’s not going to leave him alone, not for anything.

Geralt doesn’t answer, just makes a short gesture for them to follow and then turns to walk back down the hallway. That’s fine by Ciri, it’s what she wanted anyways.

* * *

When Geralt returns this time, he’s once again brought something extra. Yennefer raises an eyebrow at Ciri as she walks into the room pulling Julian behind her, and then transfers the look to Geralt. Ciri had ignored her, but Geralt just shakes his head slightly, then goes to hover awkwardly in the corner. About what she expected from him for this to be completely honest. She’s hyper aware of the knife in her hand as she leans down to beckon Julian closer. “Do you trust me, Julian?”

Julian doesn’t even hesitate. He smiles, taking her hand, and dropping Ciri’s. “Yeah,” he chirps, “’course I do!” He must have seen the knife. Yennefer thinks briefly of a little girl handing back a dropped daisy and suppresses her sudden grief the only way she knows how.

“We haven’t been totally honest with you,” she says as she guides him towards the bed. He scrambles up quickly to perch on the edge, letting his feet swing idly as he turns back to look at her. She keeps the knife carefully pointed at the floor, not hidden but not a threat either. “It was for your own protection, but now—”

“Yenn!” Geralt interrupts her, just enough of a growl in his words that the hair on the back of her neck stands up, an instinctive reaction to having a predator at her back. But she’s the biggest predator in the room, so she ignores him, holding the hand without the knife up to ward him off. She won’t do this to Julian without telling him why. Everyone should have the chance to submit to pain willingly, give them the chance to mitigate the suffering of it.

“It was for your own good,” she continues, “but now we finally have the answers we were looking for, so it’s time to loop you in.” She sits down on the chair they’ve dragged next to the bed and takes a moment to gather herself. When she looks back up, Julian is holding his breath, clearly nervous. She gently places her hand against his narrow chest, and almost automatically he reaches up to hold her wrist with both hands. He exhales one long, shaky breath and then nods at her, brave as she would never have expected the bard to be. “You’ve noticed already that your memories aren’t right, haven’t you?” He nods in answer, both of them clearly thinking of last night’s panic, “That’s because you’re not in the right body. You’re actually all grown up, just like Geralt and I,” she says, as Geralt steps forward to offer his own comfort to the bard. His hand nearly dwarfs Julian entirely when he places it on his shoulder, and as Julian looks up at Geralt where he is standing over Yennefer, she catches the sheen of fresh tears in Julian’s eyes. If Yennefer were a weaker woman she might cry too, but as it is she steels her resolve. There is only one path out of this, and she won’t be stopped by sentiment. “I can fix it, but in order to do that I need to take some blood from you.” He rips his gaze away from Geralt to look at her, and his hands spasm briefly against her wrist. “It will hurt, but only briefly.” She promises, bringing up the knife to show to him. He peels one clammy hand away from her wrist to reach out for it, and she hides her surprise as she hands it over, hilt first. The knife looks alien in his hand, but she won’t begrudge him the chance to examine the instrument of his pain.

“We’ll take some blood and put it in the potion, and then you’ll drink it. That will probably hurt a lot worse.” Geralt makes an unhappy noise over her shoulder, but there’s little she can do about this. It’s just the truth of this kind of magic. It always costs.

Julian nods, still holding the knife. She watches him examine it for several quiet moments, before she takes a deep breath herself and stands up, wiping her hands off on her dress to get rid of the slight dampness of her palms. She goes back over to the table, grabbing a roll of bandages in preparation. Geralt is already holding the potion vial out for her when she turns back to the bed and she only hesitates for a moment before she grabs it from him. This entire process is going to be miserable, putting it off any further will only lengthen all their suffering.

“We won’t start until you’re ready.” Geralt tells Julian. Yennefer bites back the instant flash of irritation and sits back down. He’s right to offer, but this will go easier if Yennefer doesn’t give him too much to think. Thankfully, Julian must be thinking the same as her because he nods, quickly and then holds the knife back out to Yennefer.

“I’m okay. Do it.” Yennefer pops the cork out of the bottle with one hand, and then picks up Julian’s other hand, the one not holding the knife, and gently folds his fingers around the vial. It’s still silver, for now anyways, but the blood, straight from the source and freshly spilled by another on a new moon night will need to go into the potion as quickly as possible. Once Julian’s grip is secure, she takes the knife and his other hand. She places the blade against his palm, just kissing his flesh with the edge. He watches anxiously, his fingers fluttering as he flexes instinctually away from the knife.

“Hey,” she says, smiling as his eyes finally leap away from the knife to meet hers, “Have you ever seen a polka-dotted Wyvern?” Julian giggles, then gasps as she draws the knife across his palm. Quickly, she tucks his fingers into a fist, and then carefully helps him squeeze the steadily dripping blood into the vial. Each drop disturbs the coloring of the potion, and Yennefer carefully watches as the silver dissolves away, folding in on itself away from the blood as it turns a viscous green. The blood sizzles when it hits the surface of the potion, and finally, after exactly thirteen drops, it flashes a dazzling white and Yennefer tips the vial away just before the fourteenth drop falls. It hits Yennefer’s hand instead, and she’s perhaps quicker to hand off the potion to Geralt then she would have been if it had missed her. She wipes the blood off on her skirt, planning already to burn this dress, and tucks the bandages into Julian’s other hand. “You’re okay,” she says, but there’s really no need. He seems fine, and he’s gripping the bandages with enough pressure to slow the bleeding.

Quickly, before she can think about it for too long, Yennefer grabs the vial back from Geralt. It absolutely reeks of peppermint, but she knows that will fade from the room quickly enough. She holds Julian’s head with one hand, and tips the vial to his lips with the other. He raises one hand automatically, to help or to hinder, it matters not. Yennefer keeps up a quiet stream of reassurance until it’s all been swallowed and then she passes the vial off to Geralt, pulling Julian into her chest as he coughs and gags. She won’t be able to hold him for much longer, not once the potion really takes control, but she can give them both this last kindness. She kisses his forehead, holding him tighter as he starts whining, the discomfort clearly growing to be too much. He yelps, squirming, and then, as his bones start cracking, he screams, an agonized yell that hurts Yennefer as deep as her magic has ever been. She lets go of him, unable to hold him through the contortions his body is forcing itself into as it speeds through the stages of growth that had been ripped away from it. It hurts to watch, but she won’t do him the disservice of looking away. She needs to be ready the instant it’s done, prepared to save his life, a debt twice-unpaid, but one she won’t ever collect on. Magic always costs, and pain is a currency all its own.

* * *

When Julian starts screaming, Ciri wants to scream too. She won’t— can’t, really, aware of the destructive power of her own voice, and half-terrified of it besides that. It’s horrible, another atrocity in the never-ending stream of them that her life has turned into. She mourns briefly for the Ciri of before, who’s greatest misery in life was not being allowed the freedom to shirk her royal duties when she wanted, and wants to hide her face from the suffering in front of her. She’s crying, she’s sure she is, and then someone is blocking her view of the bed where Julian is... melting and stretching and screaming in pain. She looks up unsurprised to find that it’s Geralt in front of her, and she hardly has to think before she throws herself forward into his arms. The chamber echoes with Julian’s screams, starting high and lowering in pitch as they transform to insensate sobbing, and Ciri’s cries, which do not change except to be muffled slightly by Geralt’s shirt as she presses as close to him as she can.

* * *

Time stretches and then contracts and Geralt has no idea how long it’s been before Jaskier’s screaming stops. Ciri is sobbing against his chest, and Yennefer is a rigid force against his back. The sudden void of sound that Jaskier’s silence creates sucks all the air out of the room, and for a horrifying moment Geralt is certain he didn’t make it, that there is nothing of Jaskier left in that bed and they’ve just committed murder, chasing after the unattainable.  
“Geralt, I need you.” Yennefer snaps at him, and he jerks back to attention, gently peeling Ciri off of his shirt and turning around to face the situation. Jaskier is still breathing, but he’s a fucking mess. His left leg is... twisted awkwardly, clearly broken, as is his right arm; there are bruises wrapped around his neck, purple and livid and Geralt thinks that’s the worst of it until he smells the blood. He lurches forward, yanking the tunic (which, now too small for the chest that fills it, has ripped at the seams,) fully apart, horrified to find cuts opening themselves on Jaskier’s chest.

Even as Geralt watches, burns bubble up, cauterizing the wounds where they intersect, and if it weren’t writing itself across his friend’s skin, Geralt might almost be impressed by the savagery of it all. As it is each new mark sets Geralt’s teeth grinding harder, until he feels his back molar actually pop, ground straight back on its roots. The sudden bolt of pain grounds him and he wrenches his gaze away from Jaskier’s body as Yennefer slaps a roll of bandages into his chest. “Don’t just stand there, you imbecile, stop the bleeding!” Yennefer scrambles up onto the bed, kneeling at the very top as Geralt takes her command and starts to put pressure on the worst of the cuts. She pulls Jaskier’s head into her lap and Geralt watches bruises bloom and then fade, rapidly cycling through their worst, landing on somewhere half-healed and ugly, broken capillaries feathering out around the worst of them, tiny cuts and half-healed abrasions appearing and then disappearing just as suddenly.

Yennefer places her hands on either side of Jaskier’s head, and then meets Geralt’s eyes over Jaskier’s prone body. “Pull his leg and arm straight Geralt— this is hard enough already.” Her voice is strained against the toll of whatever magic she is already casting, and Geralt doesn’t hesitate, knows he doesn’t have time to feel badly about this even as he tries to gentle his motions, hating himself as he feels the bones shifting in Jaskier’s leg as he pulls it out straight. He has to twist it too, wrench his foot back the right way from where Jaskier’s earlier insensate thrashing had jostled it, and he hopes that Yennefer is good enough to fix this fully. He doesn’t linger, moving quickly to grab Jaskier’s arm— he’s gentler here, afraid of the damage he could do moving too quickly; he hears the bone creak, an almost comical squeak against the horror of what is happening as he puts the arm back to rights. He moves back to put more pressure on the largest cut, a slice that crosses near the entire length of Jaskier’s stomach, and watches in muted fascination as Yennefer’s magic works its way through the bard’s body.

The cuts wind their way back together first, and then the burns turn to healed flesh, shiny with scarring, but whole enough. Jaskier’s leg cracks as the bone snaps back together, and Geralt is fervently glad that Jaskier is unconscious for this. They couldn’t spare him his earlier pain, but this they can take from him. The arm mends more gently, a muted _thwucking_ noise that Geralt only hears because of his mutagens. The bruises around his neck fade last, the darker purples lightening until there’s just the faintest hint of yellow to indicate anything had even happened.

Geralt finally looks up from Jaskier’s body, checking in on Yennefer first. His timing is impeccable; just as he looks up, Yennefer gasps, her eyes flying open from where they’d been closed in concentration. They’re violently purple and gorgeous with the remains of Yenn’s determination as she lists sideways. She falls back on her ass, coming up short against the headboard, and laughs wildly. “I fucking did it,” she says, chest heaving against the exertion.

“Yeah,” Geralt replies, stepping back from the bed to fall into the chair that Yen abandoned. “You fucking did it.” They meet gazes and then both of them are laughing, relief running rampant through their bodies. The adrenaline rush has come and gone and the crash makes Geralt’s limbs shaky and his head light, and he pulls Ciri into his arms where she is standing off to the side, staring at them both like they’re insane.

“He’s okay?” she asks, leaning over Geralt’s loose grip on her middle to peer at Jaskier. His head is still laying across Yennefer’s lap, but at Ciri’s words Yennefer shifts him off of her, clambering off of the bed gracefully and then turning back around to rearrange Jaskier, so he’s laying more comfortably.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just sleeping now,” she says, taking a seat against the headboard again. She pulls her legs up on the bed, yawning widely.

“Are you going to sleep now, too?” he asks, dodging the quick hand that she flails out to try and hit him.

“Shut up, witcher.” She says, smiling with her eyes closed. “If I am it’s none of your business.” She yawns again, slumping a little more against the headboard. It’s a big bed, plenty big enough for the two of them, Ciri too if they squished together. Rolling his eyes, Geralt stands up, intending to at least make them more comfortable if they’re going to nap. Yennefer grumbles when he makes her stand up again, but she’s willing enough to move the blankets after Geralt picks up Jaskier. Yennefer pulls them back and Geralt places Jaskier gently on the sheets. There’s enough room on the far side for Ciri, and after Yennefer tucks the blankets back around Jaskier, Geralt gives her a boost so Ciri can curl up between Jaskier and the wall. Yennefer can tuck herself in, so Geralt quickly ducks in the room next door to pull more blankets off of his own bed. There are furs packed away from old hunts, back when he still bothered with taking trophies, and he grabs one for Ciri and Yennefer each. Ciri smiles sweetly at him when he drops it over her, and for thanks Yennefer rolls her eyes at him. The effect is somewhat ruined by the soft smile she can’t quite keep from her lips but he lets her be, sitting back in the chair. He’ll watch over them.

He meditates, synching his breath to theirs as they slowly drop off to sleep, Ciri first, then Yennefer quickly after. Jaskier is finally back to his normal self, and as horrifying as the process was, (if Geralt had ever witnessed the Trial of the Grasses from an outside perspective, rather than being caught in the middle of it, he might have compared it to a sped-up version of them,) he will be just fine when he wakes up. Geralt trusts Yennefer’s magic, and he’s ready, he thinks, to apologize to Jaskier. He knows what needs to be said to fix his mistakes. He settles into his meditation, clearing his mind. That all can wait until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY, HI, I KNOW. I KNOW. I promised Yennefer and Jaskier bonding like..... five chapters ago and I am so sorry to be putting it off another one (Does Yennefer bonding with bb!Jask count???) We're getting there I promise. I wanted to get to it this chapter, and in fact in my document for this the chapter heading literally read "Part Six- Jaskier" as a promise to myself that we were going to get Jaskier POV again but uh..... that.... didn't happen. Instead, this is 6.2k of Geralt and Yennefer (also some surprise Vesemir and Ciri!) but finally FINALLY we have unbbfied!Jask!!!!!! HE'S BACK!!!! and so fucked up guys, you have no idea. 
> 
> I have another job interview tomorrow (Was I procrastinating cleaning my room to write this??? Again????? Yes don't call me out on it okay, that's v rude) so I'm posting this tonight in the hopes that if the interview goes poorly I will at least have validation in the form of nice comments to read after so, as ever! pls comment and feed the author, it really does make me write faster I promise.
> 
> Thank you for reading, subscribing, kudosing, and especially commenting, it means a lot to me! <3 <3 <3


	7. i think i know what i want (but i don't know where to go)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have an END IN SIGHT PEOPLE!!!! I'm so excited! One more chapter after this and I'll either write a one-shot epilogue to tie up Jaskier and Loretta's issues or include that conversation as a little bit at the end of Chapter 8 I haven't decided yet, but fear not this beast is almost finished!
> 
> Chapter title from Inexplicable by The Correspondents

Jaskier wakes up. In and of itself, that’s a surprising realization, half convinced as he was that the potion they shoved down his throat was meant to kill him, but what’s more surprising even than just still being alive is that he’s in a bed. A nice bed. He’s warm, and the pain which has so ruled the last.... okay, well he doesn’t know how long it’s been, but it’s been a long time since he hasn’t been in pain, so even the muted way it’s thumping through his body now, more like a healing ache than the open agony it had been just last night, is at once both disarming and fucking heavenly.

His awareness is still rather fuzzy, but as he wakes up further and considers the position he’s in now, suspicion crowds in, obliterating any warmth of goodwill he’d been initially feeling upon waking. This is the magic: whatever the potion has done, he knows he can’t trust his senses; they still mean to force him to turn, to try and extract Geralt’s whereabouts from his mind through trickery, since brute force didn’t work on him. (He’s almost proud of this, and would perhaps be prouder if it was actual knowledge he had to offer, and knowing it, still made the choice not to divulge, rather than just wretched ignorance of the witcher’s whereabouts given his... departure from his life after the dragon hunt.)

He fights for more awareness through the layers of exhaustion keeping him down, wanting at least to be able to see what trickery they’ve concocted for him. He’s so fucking _tired_ though, and it takes a nearly monumental effort to force his eyes open. He blinks slowly, struggling to focus as he shifts his body, trying to relearn it. He’s surprised to find himself under blankets. His roaming leg pushes up against another human as he moves and two things become abundantly clear in rapid succession: One, his leg is no longer broken, which is exactly as baffling as it is relieving. ( _What the fuck are they playing at here?)_ And Two: he’s not alone in this bed. Absolutely nothing good has ever come from waking up in a bed with little clue about how he came to be there. ( _Well_ , that’s not quite true, he’s passed plenty of nights in beds that he didn’t remember entering, and passed many more mornings re-learning the bodies of the women (and men) he’d woken up next to, but this feels distinctly more threatening than a simple night of drunken debauchery.)

Adrenaline spikes down his spine and he’s able to capitalize on the sudden rush of energy that accompanies it to sit up, and, alright, he doesn’t quite make a clean escape but he does manage to get off the bed at least, though that involves climbing over— _another body_? How many people are in this bed? The adrenaline rush takes him all the way to standing and then suddenly dips out, leaving him next to a chair which contains, _what the actual, literal fuck_ , a meditating Geralt of Rivia? He whips back around, and the body he climbed over was apparently Yennefer of fucking Vengerburg, now sitting up and staring at him like _he’s_ the one who’s lost his marbles.

He spins back around to face Geralt, who is no longer meditating, and is in fact now standing himself. They’re both watching him, like he’s the one that’s gone mad, which is just one step too far to the left of what Jaskier was prepared to deal with today. A head pops out from behind Yennefer on the far side of the bed, a little blonde girl rubbing one hand across her eyes, yawning and— _Melitele’s arsehole_ , it’s the fucking _Lion Cub of Cintra_?

“What the fuck is this?” Jaskier is not proud that he mostly yells that, but he honestly thinks this is enough to test the resolve of any man what’s spent the last who-even-knows-how-long _literally_ being tortured for information he does not possess. “What the fuck are you playing at?” he hisses, backing up, desperate to get some kind of understanding of the situation. His back hits the wall of the room before any of the apparitions in front of him move, and he thinks he’d be more ashamed of how fucking scared he sounds if his voice wasn’t still absolutely wrecked. It’s hoarser than he’s used to, screamed out from the potion, obviously, (temporarily, he hopes) and he can feel the panic compressing his ribs.

“Jaskier, you’re safe,” possibly-Geralt or Rience says, and then possibly-Yennefer or Fringilla is standing up too, and then, what may-or-may-not-be-Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, the fucking _Lion Cub of Cintra,_ or just another nameless guard, is standing as well and this room is way too fucking crowded. He can’t breathe, again, and he’d be mad, _oh,_ he’d be so fucking mad if this were real and he was acting like this, he’s fucking furious to be breaking down like this now in front of that godsdamned mage and if Rience really is in here Jaskier is going to kill him, actually murder him in cold-blood just as soon as he has the chance, because this is going to break him, he can tell already. This will be the thing that steals away his sanity because how long has he wanted to be saved? How long has he dreamed of Geralt swooping in and making things right and the mage must know, that’s why she’s done this. (Is he that obvious?)

He’s really not breathing now, is pressed as close as he can be to the wall without actually becoming part of it, and he knows he’s half-feral and out of control and he hates it, it’s awful, so he feels only relief as his vision starts to waver. Jaskier’s knees buckle, an automatic response to the lack of air, and as he falls to the ground the last thing he sees is the mage lurching towards him.

* * *

Ciri is not crying, but she’s definitely on the verge: it takes all of her concentration to hold back the tears because she’s not the important person here, right now, in this moment. She knows that, so she holds it together and just does exactly what’s asked of her. Yennefer and Geralt have gotten Jaskier, now an adult, (and isn’t that weird and unsettling but also strangely right) back into the bed and they’re tending to the longest and deepest of the wounds across his stomach, which Yennefer’s healing hadn’t quite finished with apparently and which had started bleeding again right around the same time Jaskier had backed himself into a corner, hyperventilating because he was _afraid of them—_ she blinks rapidly, clearing her vision and turns back to looking for the healing salve that Yennefer requested from her. Yennefer’s magic had done a lot for most of the worst of Jaskier’s condition, but the deepest wounds must still need time and attention to heal fully. The salve is hiding under a roll of bandages, so Ciri grabs that too, handing both off quickly to Yennefer.

Yennefer and Geralt are crowding over Jaskier on the bed, moving quickly and assuredly to get him fixed back up. They’ve slowed down slightly, now that he’s back in place and they can work on him, and as some of their frantic urgency drains away, Ciri feels calmer. She doesn’t actually know what any of their connections are to Jaskier outside of him being Julian (no one has really _told_ her anything) but she can guess based on Jaskier’s work that he’s traveled with Geralt for a long enough time that they must be friends. And Yennefer is a friend of Geralt’s too, so they must all be friends together, so she knows that he’s safe with them, that they would never hurt him.

Geralt reaches past her to pull a bundle of cloth from the table, and Ciri dances just out of the way, moving to the end of the bed so she has a better view of what they’re doing to him. Geralt shakes out the bundle across Jaskier on the bed revealing a plain black shirt and breeches, and she can’t help the worry, watching them work, that maybe they aren’t being careful enough with him, as they move his limbs this way and that to put the new unbloodied shirt on him, and—face flushing red, she spins around as they maneuver Jaskier into the new breeches too. She doesn’t turn back around until she hears Yennefer clamber back off the bed, and when she does she’s relieved to see that they’ve got Jaskier all squared up. He looks like he could just be sleeping instead of half-dead and bloody like he’d looked when Geralt picked him up from the wall where he’d crumpled.

She breathes out half a sob even imaging it, and then Yennefer, Yennefer who Ciri has only known two days, keeps walking forward until she’s close enough to pull Ciri into her arms, a mother’s embrace a surely as any hug Ciri has ever experienced.

(She thinks of the women who helped her while she was on the run, the first one who gave her the boots from the halfling (the twisted discomfort and gratitude and revulsion of witnessing how her hatred benefited Ciri, watching the halfling stab her and the renewed horror of the brutality of this world) the woman who found her in the field, who’s horse she had stolen but who had helped her even after that, the compassion that comes out in the wild where reliance on others is more than a saving grace— it’s humanity at its best: she thinks of them all, these various hugs and she thinks that this is the one that’s felt most like home since she left it. Grandma was terrifying too, harsh, and wild, and fierce— but she would soften for Ciri and Eist, and the wildness of Yennefer as it turns to softness around Julian, around Geralt, around her now, too, reminds her of Calanthe— of being loved by dangerous people and how safe that makes you.)

Yennefer is rubbing her back as she sobs and she wants to explain, that she’s not trying to distract them, that she wants them to help Jaskier, but she can’t get the words to form on her tongue, and Yennefer is shushing her anyways. She’ll calm down later, maybe, but for now she lets herself be held and hopes fervently that Jaskier will be okay.

* * *

It’s a calculated decision to send Geralt and Ciri away. They both need rest, (they all do, really) and once she tells Geralt that Jaskier’s not going to wake up for several hours—a slight, but necessary exaggeration— it’s easy enough to convince Geralt to take Ciri down to breakfast, leaving her alone in the room with Jul—with Jaskier. How strange the turns her life has taken since meeting Geralt.

Jaskier is laid out on the bed, tucked underneath the covers again in deference to the chill of the keep. Yennefer loses track of the time slightly, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps. She doesn’t want to lose him. What a thought, her, Yennefer of Vengerburg, who has gotten everything she ever wanted, through force and through magic and through her own determination, grit and muscle and backroom dealings, who has never let anyone stand in her way: the only stumbling block of the entire catalogue of her desires and it’s a fucking mortal bard, a godsdamned mortal man— her time is so much more precious here, (she can work on Istredd, he’ll come back to her, but the bard is already aging and time doesn’t mean the same thing to her as it does to humans, hasn’t in a long time but she’s not so far removed from her awareness of it that she’s not worried about his mortality—especially not when this is the second time she’s had to save him. Might not be the last either, if Nilfgaard still wants Ciri.)

She moves to sit at the foot of the bed, needing a break from staring uselessly at his chest as it rises and falls. It’s the first bit of time she’s really had to herself almost since she found little Julian in the market. She spares an idle thought for the things left behind in her cottage, but she’s not incredibly worried. She hadn’t had anything sentimental there and, thinking bleakly of the war that was already upon them, it seemed rather unimportant in the larger scheme of things. Most of the more practical gear had come with them after all, and anything left behind didn’t matter enough to bother going back for it.

Yennefer is not an overly sentimental person: the most she’s ever cared for possessions is just in making sure all her dresses are properly monochrome, so the only pop of color is her eyes: this, so no one can ignore them, so no one can ignore her, not in favor of other petty distractions. She kicks one leg over the other, taking no pleasure from the swish of fabric as the skirt flares out then settles across her legs. She props her elbow against her thigh and slumps into it, giving in to the despondency that wants to drag her down. She will have a proper sulk about this, and then move on. Whatever happens will happen and Yennefer will get what she wants.

(Doesn’t she always?)

* * *

Jaskier wakes up. Which is actually a surprise because the last thing he remembers is... no, wait. That’s not right. He remembers a hand on his chest, steadying him and a kiss brushed against his forehead and... _fuck._

Had he been a child? His memories slide through his grasp like wet sand, dripping out of his palms even as he tries to force them into clear shapes— the last month or so of his life feels at once like his closest memories, fresh and the context for where he is, and also as distant as the rest of his childhood, half-memories and more steeped in emotion than event. He frowns, fighting his way back to wakefulness. He feels comforted, warm, and safe, and though there’s no bodies in the bed with him (had there been two? Before?) he still feels surrounded. The blankets he’s under have been tucked in neatly so he has to exert some effort to pull himself free of their confines. His body is sore, aching and slow to respond but nothing is broken anymore and the constant agony of (he flinches instinctively away from the memory of the dungeons, of Rience and the mage and the potion,) before has slipped away so he feels more like himself, more human than he has in a long time. He finally winds an arm free from the bedclothes, and then the other arm follows swiftly and he’s caught up in a jaw-cracking yawn as he sits up on his elbows to take stock of where he is.

Where he is turns out to be a low-lit room, warmly furnished. There’s a table overflowing with medical supplies and bottles and various other items besides next to the bed, and just in front of that is a chair, empty, but he thinks he remembers someone sitting there earlier (had that been real?) so maybe not empty for long. There’s a woman too, sitting on the end of the bed facing away from him, dark hair, and oh, but he’s seen that back before.

“May I express my deepest gratitude that you are fully clothed this time, Yennefer?” he says, leaning back more fully onto his elbows. Geralt must have come for him then, if he’s wound up under Yennefer’s dubious medical care again, (is it strange that he doesn’t remember the rescue? Doesn’t he recall being... wait, hadn’t he found Yennefer first? Before Geralt?)

Yennefer doesn’t give him much of a chance to recuperate his wandering thoughts, jabbing back at him quick as a viper. “Not your usual tune, wastrel.” She turns to face him in an eerie recreation of their first fateful meeting, and Jaskier feels the same thrill of excited fear he’d felt then, a primal recognition of the power falling off of her (thrillingly similar to how he feels seeing Geralt come back from a hunt, actually, but he doesn’t want to follow that train of thought right now.)

“Wastrel!” he cries, properly chuffed at her now, “How dare you besmirch m—ahh gods,” he falls back to the bed, holding his stomach against the sharpened ache of tender skin, “should not have tried to get up so soon, carry on then with your besmirching, I’m clearly too invalid to stop you.” Clearly, he’s not fully healed yet, no matter how much better he feels. He explores the wound on his stomach, tempted to slip just his fingertips under the bandage to feel out the edges of it, but they’ve done an excellent job of bandaging it up, and he can’t feel out any place to get in at. He runs his hand across the shape of it, tracing the pain and trying not to remember being held down while Rience directed his puissant little cronies where to cut.

“What do you remember?” Yennefer’s brusque question distracts him and he frowns, trying to make sense both of her question and his memories.

“Of what?” he says, letting his mouth run away from him while he tries to put his thoughts in order. “that’s a rather broad question, sorceress, you’d need to narrow it down for me or I might just start regaling you with every poem I’ve ever memorized. Or I might tell you of my adventures at Oxenfurt, because let me tell you _right now_ , I have stories that would make your ears _burn_ , yes even you, powerful as you are, I—” Yennefer cuts him off with a laughing scoff and quelling fierceness that steals his momentum as assuredly as if she’d cuffed him over the head.

He sighs deeply, resigned to suffering through whatever flight of fancy has taken her today. Over the years it’s been made abundantly clear to Jaskier that Yennefer gets what she wants primarily by running roughshod over anyone who would dare to stop her, moving continuously forward, and denying anyone the chance to interfere by simple expedient of having already done whatever it is she wanted. He’s watched her do it, repeatedly to Geralt, using him to get her way and damn the consequences, damn the man she uses because nothing else matters; it’s a singularly selfish way to go through life and its half the reason Jaskier dislikes her so much. (The other half, of course, is that Geralt loves her, loves her fiercely the way he doesn’t love Jaskier, and it hurts to watch the man you are in love with be in love with someone else, and it hurts even more when that relationship isn’t even healthy, or when the other woman doesn’t even have the decency to appreciate the gift she has been given. (Had Jaskier ever expected to be the other woman? No, but then he’d never expected to follow a witcher around the continent either. Life was funny like that.)

What does he remember? “I... there was a potion, and it hurt. A lot.” He says, putting enough emphasis on that last syllable that he catches just a hint of a smile crack Yennefer’s stony façade. He files the motion away to unpack later, continuing his answer, “then I woke up...” he frowns trying to pin down the timeline of what he remembers. “I woke up on a doorstep.” He says, weirdly certain of that, if not where the doorstep was. Someone had helped him, hadn’t they? It was... “Odase!” he says, the name jumping to his lips, “and Razea, oh I woke up and they helped me find a way north I was...” he frowns again, trying to remember why he’d needed to go north so badly. “I was trying to find my mother,” he says slowly, piecing his journey back together. “I found you instead.” And then.... well and then she’d taken care of him, hadn’t she?

He looks up at her, feeling for all the world like he’d been given something precious and not told he had it: As his memories of the past month suddenly filter back into place he remembers seeing a different Yennefer than the one he’d known before. A Yennefer who held him while he cried, and brushed a kiss against his forehead, a Yennefer who acted like all the best parts of his own mother without the aching coldness that had made little Julian, begging for scraps at her feet, feel like his mother didn’t love him the right way. For all the love of Melitele, Jaskier doesn’t know what to do with this. He’s never done quite so quick an about face in his esteem of someone before this, and he feels almost ashamed of his earlier uncharitable thoughts. What did he know of Yennefer to call her selfish?

Yennefer clearly doesn’t want to reveal anything to him, because as he opens his mouth to... apologize? He doesn’t actually know what else he was going to say and Yennefer saves him the hassle of trying as she interrupts him: “How did you escape Nilfgaard?”

Well. She’s not pulling any punches is she. “Where am I?” A horrible pit is yawning open in Jaskier’s chest: Geralt’s not here, even though he _remembers_ being comforted by him (and oh gods but that’s embarrassing actually, ( _when will he stop being such a burden)_ he almost wishes he didn’t remember that) Geralt is here, but not in the room, and he’s been left with Yennefer who has done nothing but ask him questions: do they think he turned? (Is this real?) “Where’s Geralt?” He’d be able to tell Geralt from a vision much better than Yennefer, and if she refused to tell him where Geralt was, then well, that was an answer all on its own too, wasn’t it.

“You’re in Kaer Morhen, bard, the Witcher’s Keep. And Geralt is supposed to be sleeping right now, but if you like I can go collect him for you.” Jaskier experiences another slight dose of cognitive dissonance looking at Yennefer now: the Yennefer of before would never have offered to do anything for him, small as the favor may be, but this Yennefer almost looks upset by his question, and yet still has offered to help him. This is all rather much to deal with, weak and exhausted as he is, but he knows he won’t be able to rest until he’s at least reassured that he really had been turned into a child then taken to Kaer Morhen by Yennefer and Geralt so they could fix him.

“Please,” he says, because he is weak, and wanting, and even as daunting of a proposal of seeing Geralt again ( _fuck_ , of being a burden to him again,) is he needs to be sure. Yennefer dips her head in silent acknowledgement, and then slips out of the room. Jaskier rubs a corner of the blanket between his fingers and tried to tell his body this is real. He’s mostly confident that it _is_ real, if only because of the sheer strangeness of the ruse (and maybe a little because he hadn’t even known there was a Witcher’s Keep and as sort of the Continent’s foremost expert on Witchers (Mignole could give him a run for his coin but she didn’t travel with one like he did... or had) he was almost positive that Nilfgaard wouldn’t have conceived of it at all, much less to use in an overly complicated plot to get him to lower his guard long enough to give up information, he admittedly, didn’t even possess.) Also he’s fairly certain that no one, outside of Yennefer herself, knows that _Her Sweet Kiss_ is about Yennefer of Vengerburg, and as that’s the only song in which he even comes close to mentioning another sorceress, it does seem rather unlikely that Nilfgaard would use her visage to try and trick him.

Still... he needs to see Geralt. Even with their most recent separation (one he’d feared to be permanent) he’s still spent more of his life in Geralt’s company than out of it, and he’ll have time to feel small and stupid over needing him later, but right now he just needs him, and damn how he feels about this weakness.

* * *

Geralt can’t sleep. After Yennefer had sent both him and Ciri out it hadn’t taken much to convince Ciri to actually lay down— she’d needed the time alone. Frankly, so did he. But he can’t sleep and the idea of laying down and trying to (especially while the sun is still up) doesn’t appeal either. He goes to visit Roach instead.

Yennefer finds him there not too much later.

“He asked for you.” she says, leaning up against the stall door. He spares a glance for her, then turns back to patting down Roach. This time Roach doesn’t seem to care about her presence, but he feeds her half an apple from the sack by her hanging tack as reward anyways.

“Did he know it was me he was asking for, or does he still think he’s in Nilfgaard’s dungeons?” he asks, watching Roach lip at his hand to get the last half of the apple from him. It tickles, and he rubs his hand up her muzzle to rid his palm of the feeling, listening for Yennefer’s answer.

“I think he knows enough. We had a... not so very illuminating conversation, and I think he won’t really settle and believe in this until he sees you. His mind was scattered, I could hardly get a read on him, but he did ask to see you first before anything else, so I suggest you go see him now.” She gestures shortly back at the keep, and Geralt smiles wryly at her, dreading the upcoming conversation but grateful enough that he gets to have it at all.

“Thank you.” He puts as much sincerity into his words as he can, needing her to understand the breadth of what she’s given back to him. She rolls her eyes, (Yennefer doesn’t blush, as a rule, but he can see the barest hint of it on her cheeks, so he knows she’s pleased, besides the gentle flowering of her happiness he can smell on the air.) He leaves her with Roach, determined to get to Jaskier as soon as possible.

His momentum carries him all the way to the door and then leaves him. He braces himself against the wood, breathing out sharply through his nose in preparation for finding Jaskier on the other side. This is not going to be an easy apology. Jaskier can be petty and hold grudges and he’s the most stubborn idiot this side of the Pontar, but he’s also been Geralt’s closest (his only?) friend for the last two decades and that has to mean something to Jaskier just as much as what it means to Geralt.

“Just come in already! I can hear you breathing out there and it’s making me twitchy!” Jaskier calls out through the wood, startling him, but he laughs because _gods_ , it’s been a long time since he’s last been made to laugh by Jaskier. When he enters the room Jaskier is sitting up against the headboard, and he looks... fuck he still looks wrecked, Yennefer’s healing could only do so much after all, but the marks on his face are gone at least, and the worst of it is in the smallest details. His hair is dull, his eyes aren’t as sparkling clear as they normally are, and though he’s smiling, it’s just a ghost of what it normally is.

“Jaskier.” He says, and then stops— there are too many words piling up on his tongue and he wants— no, _needs_ to say them all but he can’t force them into order fast enough and he’s learned the folly of just letting his tongue loose— especially around Jaskier, who deserves more than the anger and irritation which is the only language he speaks effectively. Geralt knows how to talk a man down from killing, and how to twist an argument back around to convince someone that he’s right, and how to negotiate for a fair price on a contract, but none of those skills will help him here, not when the outcome matters so fucking much. Geralt is useless when it really matters. He couldn’t save Renfri with his words, couldn’t fix anything in Cintra, and he couldn’t convince Yennefer not to go after the dragon— the more that’s at stake the more spectacularly Geralt fails.

He shakes out of the negative spiral to sit at Jaskier’s bedside. Jaskier opens his mouth to speak, but Geralt raises one hand to stop him— if he’s going to fix this he needs to start now.

“I’m sorry, Jaskier. I— you’re not...” the words run away from him and he doesn’t know where to start. Jaskier is watching him like he’s a wild animal, primed to lash out, and that too is his fault— Jaskier has never once watched himself around Geralt, has never ever been careful with him or because of him, and it’s not fear, not really, but it’s close enough to set Geralt’s teeth on edge regardless. _Fuck_ , he’s already screwing this up and it’s been less than a minute since he started. “I’m sorry,” he growls, furious and ashamed, and he can’t even look at Jaskier anymore, staring instead at his hands where he is clasping them together between his knees. “I treated you poorly, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I am asking for it anyways. You have been my friend in times when I was not a very good friend to have, and I didn’t appreciate that until I sent you away. I should never have said it would be a blessing to be without you.” He looks up finally, as Jaskier sniffs, and he’s startled to find tears in his eyes. “I have missed you and the idea that because of me Nilfgaard had captured you, I—” he cuts himself off again, not prepared to unpack that at all. “I understand,” he says, still meeting Jaskier’s gaze, “if you wish to be quit of me. But I value our friendship, and I hope you can forgive me for tarnishing it.” Jaskier blinks tears out of his eyes, and shaking his head, starts to laugh.

Geralt whips around to look at him, the first stirrings of hurt rising up in his chest.

“Did that hurt? It looked physically painful.” Jaskier says through his giggles, a helpless desperate sort of humor, and Geralt feels bewildered by it. He expected this conversation to end in so many different ways, but never laughter.

“What?” he says, flatly, watching as Jaskier hugs himself around the middle, still bent over with the force of his mirth. This is... not a reaction he prepared for.

“I’m sorry Geralt, I’m just so fucking relieved, it’s hard to still be angry.” He says between laughter, reaching out one hand to pat Geralt's leg most likely, but Geralt has grabbed it between his own before he’s even thought about it. Jaskier blinks up at him, and Geralt is so fucking glad he’s still here: that he still cares about him, that he still wants to laugh with him, or at him, or whatever flight of fancy steals over him, that it clogs up his throat and he can’t do much more than just stare at Jaskier and hope he can somehow translate it, the way he always seems to just understand Geralt and what he needs. He’s not been nearly good enough to deserve the kind of loyalty that Jaskier hands out like it is nothing, but he vows to never forget that again. “It’s okay.” Jaskier says, smiling at him. He squeezes Geralt’s hand and Geralt squeezes back, smiling too. “We’re okay,” he says, and the last of the tension that Geralt has been carrying in his shoulders since that fucking mountain just falls away. Were he not already sitting, he’s sure his knees wouldn’t be able to keep him up. He laughs, because Jaskier is back, and safe, and doesn’t hate him, and that’s more than Geralt had thought he was going to get from life.

“You should rest,” he says, because Jaskier is drooping, clearly still exhausted, and because there’s no fear that he won’t be fine anymore. He is an adult now, (and the memories of Jaskier as a child wailing out his pain against his shoulder will never leave him, but at least he will have new memories of Jaskier laughing and smiling and singing again to replace them), and he needs rest more than anything.

“ _You_ should rest.” Jaskier grumbles at him, bratty as ever. He pulls his hand back, wriggling his body so he’s lying on the bed, and Geralt, perhaps in the most impulsive move of his life, climbs onto the bed beside him.

“Alright.” He says simply, enjoying the way Jaskier instantly laughs at him but yields the necessary space on the bed to accommodate him. They lie side by side on the bed, Jaskier still giggling gently, and Geralt smiles at the ceiling, glad to be given this little slice of peace for as long as it will last. There will be time later to figure out what they’re going to do about Nilfgaard, and to get the full story of what happened from Jaskier. For now, he will close his eyes and take a nap next to his bard, because the universe has given him a blessing, and he thinks it’s high time he appreciated it.

* * *

Yennefer is not a jealous woman. She’s a sorceress who has gotten everything she’s ever wanted out of life by her own damn power and so there is nothing to ever be jealous about. If she wants it she gets it, and nothing has ever been held back from her. (Except love in all its forms, denied by her mother, by Tissaia, by a child; except this, the bard to love her the way he loves Geralt; except to be important to someone for more than just her magic—)

And this is the core of what drives her mad about the bard. A month ago she thought of him as nothing more than an unpleasant tag-along to Geralt’s continued presence in her life, and now she... _fuck_ now she wants to _matter_ to him. She kicks angrily at a pile of hay and drops heavily to sit down on one of the bales, glaring hatefully at her boots. What a pathetic pile of shit she’s walked herself right into. She almost wishes it was as simple as still wanting a child, and that she’d only grown to care about the bard as such—if that were the case she could just leave now, contract fulfilled, and ignore whatever pathetic flutterings her heart wanted as she valiantly ignored the truth of Borch’s words to her that day on the mountain. She’d not thought of it, been doing her best not to think of it, since that day really, but in the months between then and Tissaia asking her to fight at Sodden, they’d wormed their way into her heart anyways, hadn’t they.

She hadn’t seriously tried to look for a cure in all that time, hadn’t even dabbled in obscure magicks for anything besides amusing herself or helping a client for coin as she bounced from place to place. And now where was she, but the exact place she had sworn to never be again? Caught up in the storm of Geralt’s life as he was whipped about by Destiny, dragging her along for whatever sins had cursed her life from its outset. What a fucking joke her life had become. Why did she care about the bard? She didn’t know him, not really, (though she couldn’t lie and say his music wasn’t catchy), and it wasn’t just that she missed having a child... for as brief as she’d had him to take care of, it didn’t really scratch the same itch as being a mother.

So what? What about him made her feel this way, like if he didn’t love her she was nothing, like if he truly really couldn’t stand her she would shrivel up and die— she’d never craved for anyone to feel this way about her (not since Istredd, maybe Geralt, maybe now, Geralt’s bard?) She wants to scream against the senselessness of it all, and she can feel it building up in her throat already. _Fuck it_ she thinks, burying her face in her hands; she’s far enough away from the main building that no one will hear her. She lets go, screaming it all out, a frustrated half-compressed roar against the rage swirling in her chest. Her throat burns as she cuts it off, panting in the sudden ringing silence of the stables. Relief and catharsis leave her weak, heaving for breath against her palms. _What a fucking joke_ she thinks as Geralt’s horse nickers in reproach at her. She ignores the flighty thing, still slightly sour over its disapproval of her earlier.

_Fuck it_. She can do nothing until she has intel, so she’ll just have to talk to the bard. She needs answers, needs the full story about Nilfgaard so she can plan their next steps. And besides— there is a child here in this keep, who _does_ need her. Needs _her_ specifically. There is no one else equipped to deal with that child’s power and Ciri will need a woman around to keep from going crazy. Geralt’s daughter will turn out absolutely helpless if he’s left to raise her alone. Yennefer will just have to stick around to prevent that from happening. She’s determined to track down her answers or at the very least, food, she thinks reluctantly, as her stomach growls in warning at her. She spares one last glare for the horse, which gets her a warning neigh in response as she sets off for the keep. Food, first. Then, answers.

* * *

Jaskier wakes up. Fucking, again, but at least this time he’s reasonably confident he knows where he is. He breathes in deeply, stretching slightly, pleased to feel the pull of muscles in his back and arms. His stomach still hurts, but it’s a hurt he expects now, and he doesn’t stretch far enough to really make it burn. Geralt grunts next to him, snuffling adorably in his sleep and Jaskier turns carefully on his side to better look at him.

They’ve shared beds before, traveling across the continent the way they did had left them without the luxury of their own space more often than not, (and truly, Jaskier would never complain about being closer to Geralt, not when closeness was a torture he craved so sweetly all those years,) but it’s still thrilling every time it happens. Geralt’s face is fully relaxed, all the tiny lines of tension that usually hold his mouth in its perpetual frown finally gone with the laxness of sleep. Jaskier aches to be able to reach out and touch, but just because Geralt still wants to be his friend (and oh, hadn’t that been a revelation all on its own, Geralt admitting to _missing_ him!) doesn’t mean that Jaskier has permission to overreach. He’s painfully aware of the space that Geralt draws around himself, and even more aware of the dangers of overstepping.

But he can watch, and no harm will come of it. They must not have been sleeping for long, because Jaskier is still exhausted, and he has to fight the drooping of his eyes as he watches Geralt sleep. A lock of hair has fallen into his face and it’s gently stirring from the force of his steady, witcher-slow breaths, and Jaskier loses several moments just... watching.

* * *

Yennefer finds Vesemir in the kitchen, cutting potatoes and carrots and other vegetables with a pot already simmering full of what must be rabbit if Yennefer’s nose has anything to say about it. She’s not sure how to feel about Vesemir: he’d be intimidating if she were the sort to be cowed by age or experience or general grumpiness, but she’s not so she mostly feels disconnected from him. She realizes they haven’t filled him in on the spell’s completion though, so she feels obligated to offer him an update.

“Thank you for letting me read your texts,” she says, sitting at the table, and forcing herself to adopt a relaxed position. She can’t read him, and his mind is closed off to her, tighter even than Geralt (who’s impossible to read without herbal interference to start with) but she’s not so out of practice at reading body language that she can’t tell he’s genuinely relaxed around her now. His calmness makes her feel calmer in return, and she finds that just through proximity she no longer has to pretend to be sprawled on the chair. The tension has just gone out of her without her even noticing. Neat trick, she thinks, watching him slice the carrots evenly. It’s a heart-beat steady rhythm and she lets it soothe her as she continues. “We have returned the bard to his normal state. I sent Geralt to talk to him, but I don’t know enough yet to plan our next moves, so I fear we’ll have to rely on your hospitality for a while longer.” It is, perhaps, not as tactful a request for shelter as she’s ever made, and truthfully, she ought to have checked in with Geralt first about whether he plans to stay here through the winter or not, but the season is already changing down in the valley, so it’s a moot enough point she feels confident that’s his plan even in the absence of confirmation. She rather thinks he doesn’t expect her to stay, especially not after she flat out told him she wouldn’t when they first ran into each other, but that was before she met Ciri and before he’d apologized and before she’d... well, before a lot of things. The point was, she intended to help Ciri now, and in order to train her effectively there were few places better suited than Kaer Morhen. It was well-hidden, easy to defend, safe and secure and already built for training. It was also conveniently hidden from the Brotherhood, a force that Yennefer herself was glad to be rid of, and it would suit her purposes to spend a season or so here, just until she recovered enough to find a safe house of her own. They couldn’t stay here indefinitely after all, and she’d always been a forward-thinker.

Vesemir grunted in acknowledgment, refocusing her attention on the matter at hand. “I suppose you’ll want to take supper to them, then? Can’t imagine your bard is well enough to make it down here.”

If she feels any particular way about Jaskier being called hers she doesn’t give it space to grow, refocusing instead on the next steps of her to-do list. They need to know everything about how Nilfgaard captured Jaskier, what they did to him, how he escaped— they need to devise a training plan for Ciri, and they need to research why exactly they want her so badly in the first place. Knowledge is power after all, and they have an incomplete set of cards to play with here; they hardly know the rules of this new game. She can’t do much of anything about the majority of that right now, but she supposes she _can_ take food to the bard.

“When will it be ready?” she asks, standing up from the table.

“Not more than half an hour from now,” Vesemir says, tipping the vegetables into the pot. “I’ll make you up a tray if you need.” She thanks him quietly, then leaves, heading for Ciri’s room. She’ll check in on the girl, wake her up for the stew at the very least.

The walk to Ciri’s room is quiet and takes her right by the room where they’ve stashed Jaskier. She slows to a crawl as she walks by, overcome by a sudden intense curiosity about what Geralt and the bard might be talking about. She’s never worried about eavesdropping before (hell, she’d grown up eavesdropping on everyone just as a matter of living the way she did before Aretuza) but even as she presses her ear to the door she can’t help but worry this is crossing boundaries. Still, it’s not enough to stop her. The wood is cold under her face ( _fucking_ everything up here is cold; Yennefer has been wearing her furs non-stop) but it only takes her a moment of listening to determine that they’re not even actually talking. They’re... she presses her ear closer, but there’s no sound still. What are they doing? She gently pushes the door open, slowly enough that the hinges don’t make any noise. When it’s open enough she can peek in, she does, and is not actually all that surprised to find them both sleeping. She sighs, opening the door fully and leaning against the jamb just to watch them for a moment.

Geralt hasn’t truly slept at all since they found each other on the path, preferring to meditate and stay ready to act. Yennefer hadn’t begrudged him the option, truthfully glad for the extra assurance of her safety, and now, watching him sleep with Jaskier curled up into him, she feels something helplessly soft unfurling in her chest. It’s tinged with a seething anger too, muted for now by the sweetness and it’s not jealousy, because she doesn’t do jealous, but it’s something close enough that she needs to do something to rid her fingers of the desire to reach out and touch regardless. The table is still littered with the cast-off remains of their earlier healing efforts, and it’s the work of moments to clear it up. She doesn’t linger at the door, too full of that something-close-enough, but she does make sure she closes it gently so they won’t wake up. She’ll get Ciri, and then the stew and then, for the goddesses’ sake’s _finally_ , she will get her fucking answers.

* * *

He must have dozed off again, because Jaskier startles badly awake when Yennefer kicks the door open. He jerks back from not only the sudden intrusion but also the way that Geralt has suddenly risen up to a crouch before him, battle-ready against the threat that is Yennefer apparently, and a door kicked open with too much noise.

“Down, witcher,” he says, laughing through the awkwardness, and trying to angle his body so he can see past the hulking barrier Geralt has made of his body. “It’s only your sorceress, and,” he spots a tray in her hands whichexplains the rudeness of her entrance, “look! She’s even brought us food, you brute, stand down.” Geralt grumbles, sitting up fully and rubbing his face as Jaskier awkwardly climbs across the bed until he’s sitting next to him, feet braced against the stone ground. A move which he regrets almost immediately, colder than a witch’s tit ( _sorry, Yennefer_ ) as the stone is against his bare soles. He mourns, briefly, for the loss of his good traveling outfit and boots, (he’d wanted to look the best for Loretta, and look where that had gotten him.) He shies away from unpacking that thought though, not ready for the pain the memory engenders.

Yennefer ignores Geralt entirely, coming in with the tray full of food and heading straight for the table to set it down. Now that Jaskier is sitting up, he can see that Ciri is with her too, carrying a jug of something (hopefully Est Est, but Jaskier doesn’t like his chances of getting good wine here. High in the mountains of... actually he doesn’t know what mountains they’re in.)

“Geralt,” he asks, “where exactly are we?” Yennefer is fiddling with things on the table, and Jaskier is distracted by the smells emanating from her tray so he’s not actually paying all that much attention to Geralt’s reply. Geralt nudges him in the ribs, and he hums slightly as he looks back at him, zoning back in to hear the answer.

“Blue Mountains, by the mouth of the Gwenllech. Welcome to Kaer Morhen.” Which is just incredibly nice of him actually, look at his little reformed witcher. Despite the pain and the misery of getting to this point, right now, Jaskier feels pretty godsdamned warm.

“I’m no serving girl.” Yennefer says, interrupting them, and then yanking the single chair out so it faces the bed, a respectable distance between the two points. She drops into the seat, holding her bowl of stew in one hand and gesturing at the table with the other. “We’ve a lot to hear from you bard, and the quicker we cover it the better for everyone. Eat.” Ciri, having set the jug down, is in fact doling out bowls of the delicious smelling stew, and Jaskier smiles at her in thanks as she presses one into his palms. He wants to lean into Geralt, but he’s not sure that’s welcome just now so instead he hunches forward over the bowl, curling around the warmth of it. It’s been— _gods_ , both fucking forever and no time at all since he’s last eaten; starved by his captors but fed well by Yennefer as she cared for him— despite happening to him linearly, they feel split by his transformation and his time with Nilfgaard feels closer than the past month with Yennefer. It’s enough to give him a headache, and he doesn’t particularly want to untangle it, content to just... move forward, but he supposes it’s tale enough to need told and he’s the only as can do it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was getting very long! and I hit like a good point where it felt like it could be an ending so i present to you this 8.3k chapter which took me so much agonizing over before i was done with it. We have finally hit the climax people, it's all downhill and wrap-up from here! 
> 
> As ever, thank you so much for reading, and for kudosing, commenting, bookmarking and subscribing! I hope you like this update! Let me know what you think!


	8. i built a house on solid ground (never need more than this)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from Never Be by Night Winds
> 
> Thank you Thank you Thank you! I'm going to write more in the end notes, but just for now, I have to warn you: this chapter is 15k. I did not expect it to be that long, but also it needed to be that long. so I hope you forgive me for the long gap between this and the last chapter given that this is like, 25 pages in my word doc haha. Enjoy!
> 
> *Disclaimer: the characters have a convo that's tertiarily about child abuse. The opinions of the characters are ones I have created for them based on their characterization both in canon and in this story, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author. I don't think it's particularly upsetting but I did want to post a warning anyways just to help anybody who might need it. If you need more info before deciding to read feel free to dm me on tumblr (linked in my profile).

After he’s talked himself newly hoarse, after Geralt has gripped his knee too tightly as his voice broke over Loretta’s betrayal, after he ignored silent looks over his head as he skipped over the worst of the torture in deference to Ciri’s presence in the room (and alright, a little bit because he didn’t want to admit to thinking his injuries.... well, thinking them _bad_ when compared to the actual honest to gods horrible shit that he had personally witnessed Geralt go through, and who even knew what mystifying tortures Yennefer must have suffered: he knows that they don’t make sorceresses and witchers without pain, that the transformation comes at a price, and he’s lived long enough on this continent to know that the price is normally pain, suffering, and misery, writ deep in the bones of these people who have power enough to bend the world to their liking. He knows he’s nothing in comparison to that, but he doesn’t want them to think less of him regardless, so if he carefully modulates his tale to come out sounding... less pathetic, well. He’s a poet isn’t he, dramatic retellings are his forte.) He tells them of the potion, of what little he remembers, and then how Nilfgaard, just... got rid of him.

It lacks the narrative triumph of a true escape, and he feels sort of cheated of the experience if he’s honest. He doesn’t know why Nilfgaard had given up on him, has no clue why they chose to suddenly drop him. Had they thought him dead instead of turned into a child? Why had they turned him at all if they were only going to toss him aside? (Do they still have plans for him? Is he an unwitting spy of some sort?) Yennefer checks him over after he voices this fear, declares him clean of magical influence, and decides that whatever Nilfgaard had been doing with him it must not have been as well thought out as all that. Jaskier can’t help but worry about it regardless, but he trusts Yennefer, so he puts it aside, a fear to gnaw at the edges of later.

* * *

The air in the room is heavy now. They’ve moved to more comfortable positions; Geralt and Ciri are sitting against the headboard, leaning into each other, and Jaskier is cross-legged at the bottom of the bed, angled so as to face them and Yennefer both. She’s the only one of them who hadn’t moved, sitting perfectly steady in her chair, holding herself poised and silent through the entire tale.

“My memory is a little fuzzy, still.” He admits, toying with the hem of the breeches he’s wearing. They’re dark, and look suspiciously like a garment that Geralt might wear (the shirt too, but it fits nearly perfectly so he thinks it unlikely that it’s been worn by Geralt any time recently), and at any rate it’s much easier to fiddle with his clothes than look at anybody else right now. “I remember everything that happened when I was a child, but as if it happened during my actual childhood, not just a few days ago.” He looks up meeting Yennefer’s eyes because he wants her to know how much her kindness had meant to him— how much it still means to him. “Thank you, Yennefer. For taking care of me.” She scoffs, clearly uncomfortable with his earnestness, but Jaskier has been forcing warm fuzzy emotions onto Geralt for just over two decades by now: he’ll get through to her, see if he doesn’t.

“So that’s it then?” Ciri asks, sitting up on her knees to get Jaskier’s attention. “No more Nilfgaard tracking us?” Jaskier blinks at her, and makes several inarticulate sounds trying to think of an answer, before he’s saved by Geralt.

“They still want you. I don’t know why they want you so badly they were willing to take Jaskier over it, but we’ll find out soon enough and...” he pauses clearly unsure of what exactly it is they’ll do after they find out, but luckily Yennefer seems to know.

“And after that we’ll turn it to our advantage instead.” Right, because that’s as easy as saying it. But then again, if Jaskier trusts anyone enough to manipulate themselves into having the advantage against all odds, it would be Yennefer. Now that he’s seen the softer side of her, she’s won his loyalty. For better or for worse, he’s got a witcher and a sorceress now, and a princess too. If only his mother could see him now, he thinks, smiling softly at his people spread out in front of him. It doesn’t really matter what Nilfgaard wants with Ciri, not when Geralt and Yennefer are there to keep her safe. Not when Jaskier is there to tell their stories: They’ll never be forgotten, or misremembered— history is written by bards after all, and they’ve got the best bard on the continent following them around, singing their lives into legend.

* * *

Jaskier heals slowly, because he’s only human and also because the excess of magic he was subject to drained his energy and leaves him nodding off every time he pauses for more than a handful of minutes. It takes a full week before he stops falling asleep mid-afternoon, and it’s a full week after that before he’s got energy enough to be mostly mobile while the sun is up. The cut across his stomach is an angry red pucker now, and it’s going to scar, despite his best efforts with oils and Geralt’s few human-friendly decoctions, but it’s not weeping blood or anything else anymore (that had been a horrifying step in the healing process and no— he does not want to think about it) so he’s finally getting some time to himself unsupervised by Geralt’s hawkish hovering. It would be sweet (and in fact, had been supremely sweet the first day or two) except that Jaskier is starting to chafe under the constant attention. It’s a relief for everyone when Jaskier recovers enough for Geralt to relax around him.

They’ve settled into a nice little rhythm around the keep; Ciri trains with Geralt in the early mornings, before Jaskier is awake, and then in the afternoons Yennefer takes over and they work on honing her connection to Chaos. It leaves Jaskier with huge swathes of free time, and he’s taken to sneaking his way into Vesemir’s libraries to read up on monsters and witcher lore and to watch from high up as Geralt runs through his own exercises after he finishes training Ciri. He’s beautiful like this, practicing his swordsmanship on the dummies, glistening with sweat in the crisp mountain air— honestly Jaskier probably shouldn’t be watching as closely as he is, but he’s easily distracted at the best of times, and the choice between catching a glimpse of the man he’s been in love with for half his life, (when all he ever gets or will get normally are glimpses,) and reading (which while interesting, doesn’t have the same... attraction as a sweaty Geralt), is just not really a choice, is it.

He does manage to twist his attention back to his books though, as Geralt winds down his exercises. Yennefer has been avoiding him. He’s been reading up on leshens, (someone owes Vesemir a proper ballad, and who better than him), but even when he’s not up here in the library, with Vesemir watching him to make sure he sticks to the bestiaries and strays no further, he still can’t seem to catch Yennefer alone. _Oh_ , she’s very sneaky about it, he’ll give her that; he wouldn’t have noticed at all if he hadn’t been actively searching her out, but she’s been dodging his level best efforts to talk to her for two weeks now and he’s determined that it won’t go on for much longer. He’s got a plan. Bards can be devious too.

She trains with Ciri every afternoon, first in some work room she’s set up for potions and herbs and theory, and then to the courtyard to practice controlling her powers. This afternoon Ciri is going to, conveniently, forget her cloak before they transition to the courtyard. This will give Jaskier enough time to trap her in one place and actually talk to her. Or at the very least it will give him the chance. He’s sure Yennefer has escape routes already— she’s nothing if not thorough— but he’s also not easily discouraged, (just ask Geralt) so he really does think today is the day.

Now if he could just... figure out what he wants to say. He feels indebted to her, for taking care of him, but he doesn’t want that to be the end of their relationship or the place it stays. It feels distinctly unfair that they should have this one experience and then quiet distance between them for the rest of his life. They’re circling the same people after all, it’s not like they won’t ever see each other again. He just needs to be honest with her, he thinks, just lay it all out and let her pick up what she wants. He’ll scupper the rest of it and that will be that and maybe he can get another balled out of it. A treat for his students.

He realizes, abruptly, that he hasn’t sent word to Oxenfurt yet about his absence.

“Do they think I’m dead?” he wonders aloud, and then jumps when Vesemir answers him.

“Who thinks you’re dead, bard?”

“ _Oh, for Lilit’s_ — are all of you quieter than a mouse in a field, or is that unique to the school of the wolf?” he asks, snapping his book shut and ignoring Vesemir’s quiet laugh. “I just realized I haven’t sent word to the university in all of this that I’m still alive. I left a fortnight before the start of term and I was supposed to be back in time to teach a full load of classes. _Ah gods_ , they must think I’ve been murdered or something equally horrible, and here I am just ignoring my duties entirely.”

“Could post a letter. I’ve been needing to pick up supplies before the worst snows hit the pass anyways.”

“Vesemir, that is exceptionally kind of you, and I think I shall do just that.” He starts tidying up the stack of books he’d been perusing. “The bottom two I’m quite finished with, but I’ll want to see this one again,” he says, tapping the book he’d just been reading, The Tome of Fear and Loathing which had an excellent section recounting various leshen encounters near Hochberg that he wants to return to later. “I’ve got a trap to spring now, so the letter will have to wait just a bit longer if you think you won’t be leaving before say, tomorrow? I can write it this evening.”

“I’ve got patience enough for that, bard.”

“And I thank you kindly for it.” Jaskier says, bowing slightly to Vesemir before he scurries out of the door as Vesemir returns to his books; he catches just the hint of a smile on Vesemir’s face before he’s out of sight. Jaskier sets off for the courtyard whistling. Everything is going to work out wonderfully.

* * *

Everything is not working out wonderfully. _Oh_ , he tracked down Yennefer easily enough, and had just spotted her waiting for Ciri, when Geralt had quite literally run into him as he came in from his own training. In all the kerfuffle of Geralt trying to put him back to rights and Jaskier trying not to touch all that... sweaty witcher, he’d lost Yennefer, and Ciri was smiling apologetically at him as she followed. _Bollocks._ His stomach hurt anew from being jostled, and Geralt was still holding his shoulder bracingly (which, yes, very good, but also _no_ he has a _mission_ dammit.)

“This is starting to feel personal.” He says, gently extricating himself from Geralt’s hold.

“It wouldn’t happen so often if you watched where you were going.”

“No, not _this_ , Geralt. I meant the whole ‘Yennefer is avoiding me’ _thing_. I’m beginning to think she really doesn’t like me.” A hurtful thought, but one he’s been harboring in secret anyways. It’s not like he’s unaware that she has reason enough to dislike him, after all he is... well, _him_. But he’d rather thought that his time as a child had changed something. Or, he was hoping it had changed something for her, because it had radically changed things for him.

“She likes you. Why wouldn’t she like you?” Geralt crosses his arms over his chest ( _gods_ , when did it become so hot in here?) and raises an eyebrow imperiously. It is rather sweet actually that he seems to think so highly of Jaskier.

“That’s sweet of you, Geralt, but I’ve been reliably informed I’m a terrible traveling companion and that my singing voice is like buying a filling-less pie, so you can see why I might begin to think there are reasons for people not to like me. Not to mention all the cattiness over the years, most of which she started, I’ll remind you, so don’t go blaming that on me. _Na grubą gałąź trzeba grubego klina_ _,_ as my mother always said.”

Geralt frowns at him, clearly hurt by the off-handed remarks. What a soft man under all that gruffness. “Oh stop,” he says, feeling the urge to smooth over the lines in his forehead and just buff away all that sadness. “It was ages ago, you know I only mention it to tease. ‘sides I know you love my singing, not everyone is so lucky to have a personal chronicler, you know.” He waggles a finger in Geralt’s face— just annoying enough that the frown cracks and he hides half a smile behind a playful snap at the finger Jaskier is currently poking too close to his mouth. “Ahh, he bites!” Jaskier shrieks, delighted that the more playful side of Geralt is finally coming back out. He’s been downright cautious with Jaskier since he’d woken up in his adult body, and it was refreshing to see some of that falling away.

“Why don’t you just talk to her over dinner?” Geralt asks, because he is, above all else, absolutely helpless at navigating the subtler conversational arts.

“Oh sure,” Jaskier says, turning around to walk back to his room, “I’ll just ambush her with an emotionally heavy conversation at the dinner table in front of your father, your daughter and you; that won’t put her automatically on the defensive at all.” He spins around to face Geralt, walking backwards down the hallway, “Honestly Geralt, it’s like you’ve never had an emotionally fraught conversation with someone you maybe sort of wanted to start a friendship with but which would require an unofficial “laying down of arms” before you could begin.”

“Might be because I’ve never had an emotionally fraught conversation with someone I wanted to start a friendship with that would require an unofficial laying down of arms before I could begin.” Geralt responds, drier than Skelligen jerky and twice as flat.

“ _Oho!_ ” Jaskier laughs, spinning back around so he doesn’t trip on anything, “look who’s finally developed a sense of humor. It only took two decades.”

“Hmm,” is all Geralt offers in reply, because he really is secretly a truly funny bastard when he wants to be.

“Don’t worry,” Jaskier continues, “I’ll change her mind. I changed yours, didn’t I?”

“No.” Geralt says, and Jaskier stumbles, because _what_? He catches himself, stopping his forward momentum so he can look Geralt in the eyes for this, because if Geralt really still sees him as a burden Jaskier is going to have to leave _immediately,_ damn the snow, damn the mountain, and damn Nilfgaard, he’s not going to survive an entire winter of being _unwanted_.

“No?” he asks, weirdly breathy with the anxiety suddenly pooling in his gut, and _fuck_ he wishes his voice wasn’t so quick to betray him like this.

“No,” Geralt repeats, catching Jaskier in that intense golden gaze. “You didn’t change my mind. I liked you from the beginning. I’ve always liked you, Jaskier. I’ve just been shit at showing it if you truly think I don’t value our friendship. I’d sit on a scorpion with my bare backside if it would keep you safe.”

And, well, look, okay that’s a lot to unpack is what that is. Jaskier’s heart is sitting solidly in his throat, a half hopeful, half fearful lump of organ tissue and potential regrets just waiting to spill over, but that... there aren’t a whole lot of other ways to interpret that, right?

“Ahh,” he says, prevaricating to gain some space. “I... you have to know I—” and he falters there, words failing him because what could he say without revealing the whole of him? “Me too?” he finishes weakly, cursing himself for his cowardice, but he’s thrown his heart at Geralt once already, and the mountain is not so far forgotten that he isn’t still worried about it, hovering in the back of his chest always.

Geralt nods once, satisfied, and then abruptly turns off at the kitchen leaving Jaskier to continue onwards to the rooms. Jaskier stares after his retreating back, properly flummoxed. Was that...? He waits a beat, then two, hoping for some divine clarity to suddenly strike him.

Nothing happens except that he realizes he’s just standing in the middle of the hallway and, feeling embarrassed, takes off with renewed vigor for his room. He needs a minute (or several,) and then he’ll re-plan his attack. Yennefer first, because that, all of a sudden, is a much easier problem to tackle. Funny that.

* * *

Geralt keeps walking, gaining speed because his face hurts with how hard he’s blushing and _what the fuck was that_? He... well alright, he’s known that he loves Jaskier, but to admit it, out loud like that? And for Jaskier to freeze? Geralt has hunted enough rabbits in his lifetime to recognize a prey-response when he sees one. _Fuck_.

He’s practically running by the time he reaches the training grounds, desperate to work out the staticky adrenaline rush thrumming through his veins. _Fuck,_ he’s so stupid, why would he say that? He’d only just gotten Jaskier back, why is he doing anything to put that in jeopardy? He shakes himself, full-body and forceful enough to dislodge the unwelcome thoughts. He needs to distract himself, and then, if he’s lucky, Jaskier won’t think too much of it, and by the time he’s fixed whatever he thinks needs fixing with Yenn, they can just go back to what they had, which worked. Works. No need to adjust or change _anything_.

He picks up the training sword, and modulates his breathing, falling into the quasi-meditation that comes from letting his mind take a backseat to the movement of his body. He’s always better off when he’s silent, he thinks, the last coherent thought he allows himself before he runs through his forms.

(After all, hadn’t Visenna left him while he was talking? Hadn’t Yenn, and then Jaskier right after? He’s a quick learner; and even then, some lessons only need learning once.)

* * *

Yennefer is _not_ avoiding the bard. She’s busy. She has better things to do than deal with whatever histrionics that ridiculous man will no doubt want to express to her, and frankly she has more pressing matters than whatever emotional catharsis he thinks she can offer him. (If she has turned back down hallways because she spotted him at the end of them, then well, that’s not avoidance that’s just... strategy.)

Ciri is supposed to be meditating, but as Yennefer circles her again she cracks one eye open to look at her. Yennefer stops, sighing deeply. “Out with it, Cirilla. What is so distracting to you that you can’t make it through your mediations?”

“Sorry, Yennefer,” she says, sounding genuinely contrite which is at least vaguely gratifying. “Why are you avoiding Jaskier, though?” And Yennefer is no longer gratified.

“I’m not. I don’t think about the bard enough to be avoiding him.” Which is a lie even Yennefer is having a hard time believing. Ciri just raises her eyebrows at her, dropping any pretense of actually meditating. “We’re not doing this. Are you ready to actually practice some magic?”

Ciri scrambles to standing, nearly tripping on the edge of her cloak in her haste.

“What do I do?” she asks, already breathless with her excitement.

“Tell me the first rule of magic.”

“Chaos is the most dangerous thing in this world. It is all around us, all the time.” She recites, rocking up on her tip toes and then back on her heels.

“Good, what comes next.”

“Magic is just organizing that chaos. To organize chaos I need two things.”

“And those two things are?”

“Balance and control.”

“Right, now here’s the final part,” Yennefer says, casting an illusion that rises up around them. A single stone rests on a platform in front of Ciri, and as Yennefer concentrates, calling up the memory from a literal lifetime ago, another platform rises up next to it, a similar stone resting just to the side. Illusory magic has never exactly been her forte, (magic is fake enough already, why would she be interested in courting more fakeness?) but for this purpose it will do well enough. They both watch as a young Aretuzan hopeful (a mock-up of Sabrina, though the details aren’t exactly right) walks up to the podium and picks up the flower resting there. She smiles at Ciri, then clearly and properly enunciates the incantation, _zeilil aep_ , and the stone rises, floating in midair. Yennefer pauses the scene.

“Watch her flower, Ciri.” The scene resumes, and the flower withers, turning to ash in the illusion’s hand. “That’s what it looks like done right. There is no conjuring something from nothing. All magic has a give and a take associated with it. Now watch,” she says, and the mage dissolves, is replaced with a new hopeful, a new flower. This mage steps up to the podium but does not take the flower. Her stone rises as she says the words, and then just like Fringilla’s hand so long ago, instead of her flower withering away into nothing it is her hand. She screams, folding over the desiccated limb, and she falls to the snowy courtyard ground, wailing in pain as the rot moves its way up her arm. A sudden shout steals Yennefer’s attention away from the scene and she looks up, surprised to see Ciri is the one who has shouted out for her. She’s crying.

Instantly Yennefer sheds the illusion, a sick guilt crawling up her spine. “That was horrible! Why did that happen?” Ciri forces out, choked by emotion.

“This is the balance," Yennefer says, opening up her arms so Ciri can fall into her chest. She hugs her tight, running one hand through her hair in a gesture that Yennefer hopes is comforting. (She wouldn’t know personally, unused to simple gestures of affection as she is. Yennefer understands sex and desire and lust— offering safety is not anything anyone comes to her for.)

“I didn’t mean to get carried away,” she apologizes, letting Ciri dry her eyes on the collar of her fur coat. The explanation doesn’t feel enough so she continues, wanting to comfort Ciri. “The illusion was based off of Fringilla and I...” she pauses, hating how this will make her sound to Ciri, “wanted to see her hurt for what she did to Jaskier. For what she’s helped Nilfgaard do to the continent, and for being a righteous, power-hungry _bitch_.” Ciri giggles, and the sound and feel of it shoots straight into Yennefer’s heart.

“So you are thinking about Jaskier.” Ciri says eventually. Yennefer laughs, squeezing her closer. Clever girl.

“Yes. I’m thinking about the bard.” She admits. “But I should have been focused on you, and I’m sorry for scaring you.” Ciri pulls away rubbing her eyes in a gesture that Yennefer remembers from her own years of self-soothing away tears.

“It’s okay,” Ciri says, straightening up. “I wasn’t scared.” Yennefer nods, accepting the attempt to pull herself back together. “Why did that happen to her hand?” she asks, flexing her own to demonstrate.

“Magic consumes. The act of organizing chaos and making it do what you want is reliant on a transference of energy from somewhere: that’s the balance. You need to be able to direct the chaos so that it pulls from the flower, from the world around you, from anything that is not yourself. You have to control chaos, or it will eat you up. Do you understand?” Yennefer says, thinking back to Tissaia holding her scarred wrists and unraveling the bandages she’d used to keep them hidden. She both loves and hates Tissaia de Vries, and she is balancing her words and actions against the fear that Ciri would ever feel that complicated about herself. Softer, softer, she thinks, conjuring up a stone and a flower. She places them both in Ciri’s hands and then sits down cross legged on the ground, clearing away the snow to leave dry ground only half a second before she sits. She draws Ciri down with her, sitting her close enough that their knees are touching.

“Magic has the potential to be the scariest force in the universe.” Ciri shivers, and the image of a flattened cornfield briefly is so vivid in her head that she’s basically shouted it at Yennefer, “but it also has the potential to give you power enough to never need fear again.” Yennefer cups her hands beneath Ciri’s, guiding them into lying flat with the flower and the stone balanced on her palms. “If you work hard, and listen to me, I will show you how to make chaos give you everything you have ever dreamed of.

“Do you trust me?” she asks, looking into Ciri’s eyes. ~~~~

“I do,” Ciri nods, smiling at her with such intense and clear affection that Yennefer wants to shiver away from it— would if she didn’t catch herself in time.

“Then lift the stone without touching it.” Yennefer has a feeling that Ciri doesn’t need incantations, not when the power coiled inside her is so all-consuming already.

Ciri closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she watches both her palms; the stone, and the flower too. Slowly, wobbling but gaining speed, the stone rises, and just as slowly the flower withers and dies, ash in the cup of her palm.

It hovers, perfectly suspended in the air, and then with a sudden soft pop as the magic breaks, it falls back into her palm, the weight of it dipping both of their hands, before Yennefer catches them.

“I did it!” Ciri squeals, throwing herself forward into Yennefer again, wrapping her arms around her neck as she laughs wildly in Yennefer’s ear. “I’m magic!” she cries, as Yennefer hugs her back, light as air. _So this is what love feels like_ , she thinks, smiling into Ciri’s sun-warm hair. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for this feeling. Including, she reflects suddenly, pressing a kiss just above Ciri’s ear, talking to a bard.

* * *

Jaskier is determined that it’s going to work this time. He’s got a fool-proof plan. Yennefer goes to the baths after dinner, religiously and fastidiously keeping to her hygiene regiment. Jaskier had been bathing in the mornings, in deference to the fact that everyone else was busy usually so he could have privacy, and also because it gave him time to properly wake up from the deep sleep his body was using to heal itself. Yennefer usually has the pools to herself in the evenings, and while normally Jaskier wouldn’t consider intruding on someone’s privacy like this, he is actually desperate. And besides, he has a plan to make it as conscionable as possible given the givens. He’d taken his things to the baths before dinner, leaving them there so he could scurry back immediately after, beating Yennefer who would need to go gather her own supplies first, unsuspecting as she must be of his plan. That way, he could play it off as an accident and he’s counting on her pride and routine to stop her from running away again.

Now, he just needs patience. He splashes the water idly, relaxing against the side of the natural stone pool. This is perhaps one of the underappreciated beauties of Kaer Morhen, these natural hot springs buried deep underground. He tries to clear his mind, attempting to plot how the conversation is likely to go. He thinks that Yennefer will be shocked by his presence, but that being so vulnerable in front of her will make her feel more in control. His nakedness compared to her choice to remain clothed or not will make her more likely to listen to him and take his words as truth instead of some attempt at trickery.

“Well done, bard,” she laughs, startling him badly, so he splashes water up his nose. He wrinkles his face unattractively, trying to dispel the awkward water, and then, finally, cottoning on to the fact that Yennefer is here, whips around to face her, catching an eyeful of her breasts as she disrobes and strides towards the pool he’s in. “I didn’t think you had this level of machination in you, bardling.”

“Ah, well... I—” he stumbles over his words, really properly unmoored by her casual acceptance of his presence. He catches hold of himself, smiling his best harmless smile at her. “Well, I’ve got a fairly earned reputation as something of a wooer of ladies if I do say so,” he finishes, glad he gathered hold of his tongue enough to not brag about his work as a spy. Dijkstra would be proud he thought, rather bitterly, shaking his head to refocus himself on the task at hand. “You’ve been avoiding me.” He says, which hadn’t been his original opening gambit, but fuck it. They were both naked, might as well go all out and expose his heart as well.

“I have.” She affirms, calm as anything, swirling her hands across the surface of the water. Well alright, if that’s to be the name of the game.

“I’d hazard a guess it’s not because you’ve fallen madly in love with me and have kept yourself at a distance so you don’t ravish my nubile body.” He says sarcastically.

“You’d be right, but put a pin in that.” She smirks, moving closer to him. She sits down sideways on the stone bench that’s been carved into the pool’s side, one leg drawn up so she can face him. “You’re important to Geralt.” She offers simply, another point to the invisible scoreboard for her as Jaskier blinks against the force of that statement.

“So are you,” he says, unsurprised that she’s managed to take control of this conversation already.

“So am I,” she confirms quietly, still staring at him. He feels caught by her violet gaze, pinned in place by the heaviness of her intentions. This is dangerous in more ways than one, but he’s always been a little reckless with matters of the heart, hasn’t he.

“I don’t think that’s why you’ve been avoiding me though.” He offers, turning to face her as well, putting some much-needed space between their bodies.

“No, you’re right, that’s not it,” she mutters, dropping whatever game she’d been attempting to play with him. She slumps against the side of the pool, leaning her head back against the lip of the stone and then rolling it to catch his gaze again. “Tell me why then, if you know so much, bard.”

“Ah, I know enough of women to not rise to that bait, though I do have some idea, I think, of what plagues you currently. Stop me if I’m wrong, but you wanted a child, and when given one, found it difficult to give it up.”

“Don’t I still have a child? I’m training Ciri after all,” she offers, not meeting his eyes.

“Mmm,” he offers, trusting in his silence just this once to give him what he needs. They both sit in the quiet and Jaskier waits, counting the seconds. On three hundred and ninety-eight she shifts, sitting up to face him again. Right on cue.

“Perhaps you’re right, bard, and I wanted a child, and took advantage of your affliction to imagine myself a mother. I can’t have been a very good one, and you’re also right that it’s bothering me. I’m avoiding you to avoid dealing with my failures is that what you want to hear? You want me to tell you the ways I’ve not lived up to what you expect of me? There it is, bard. I’m exactly as cruel and manipulative as you paint me in your songs, and I won’t fucking apologize for any of it,” she finishes, her chest heaving from the force of her words. Jaskier did not imagine the conversation unfolding in this direction, but his heart hurts for the pain she is feeling; she’s as much a mirror to Geralt as Jaskier is his foil, and it’s not in him to let her continue feeling this way when he can fix it.

“That’s not what I meant by catching you here, Yennefer. I wrote only one song about you, and I wrote is a long time ago, before I actually knew you. I am sorry for that.” He watches her face carefully, making sure she’s listening to his intentions as much as to his words. “I just wanted to clear the air between us. I think we have more in common than what sets us apart and it would be a shame not to recognize that because of how we used to act to each other. We’re different now, both of us.” He by his heart breaking and how he had to build it back himself; her by the flayed remains she’d walled off. By having something she wants and then losing it: it’s more haunting than any ballad he’s written before, and if he thought she would let him, he’d be tempted to write this into one as well. Maybe a poem, provided he doesn’t recite it widely.

She nods, sitting back in the water, using the steam to disguise the flush in her cheeks, the glint in her eyes. He’s making progress, though he’s not sure of the shape of his path enough to tell if it’s forwards-marching or not. He hopes it is.

“What do you want then, bard? And speak plainly. I came here to bathe and I don’t have much time or patience for your usual theatrics.” He smiles, pleased to hear the softness in her voice as she insults him; _oh_ the fun they will have together.

“I want to be your friend. I rather think you haven’t a lot, and wonderful of a mother-figure as you were, I’m a bit old to be needing one these days. Save your maternal energies for our dear Cirilla, and grant me your trust and companionship.”

“And why should I want to be your friend?” she asks softly, flicking water off the ends of her fingertips and declining to make eye contact.

“Matters of the heart are not always so easily defined, Yennefer. You tell me. Why _do_ you want to be my friend?” he replies, standing up and making his way to the towel and the screen behind which he left his clothes.

“I don’t,” she says flatly. Jaskier waits, patiently drying off, then moves to pull on his smallclothes and breeches. He’s just tying his laces when she finally continues, “But if I did, I suppose it might have something to do with how inextricable from Geralt you are. And I’m not wholly averse to your witticisms either.”

“Oh well, I shall endeavor to keep being witty enough for your entertainment then,” he laughs, shimmying into his shirt as well and ignoring what’s she said about Geralt. He can think about what that means later. The stone is rough against the soles of his feet, so he drops to the ground to shove his boots on quickly, listening to the silence from Yennefer’s side of the room. He can’t see her past the screen, but he hopes it’s a thinking silence, and not a _plotting-the-bard’s-imminent-demise_ silence. He’s relatively certain they’re past that, but old habits/fears and all.

He pulls his doublet on last, and walks back to stand a respectable distance away from the pool’s edge. She’s switched to the other side, so she’s a little hazy through the steam rising over the water, but he catches the slightest smile on her lips regardless. Right, not going to kill him then.

“For what it’s worth, you really were lovely while I was... not myself.” He settles on, needing to tie up just this last loose end. It’s easier here, when they don’t have to look directly at each other, with the haze of the steam between them.

“You don’t need to flatter me, bard. You’ve convinced me, no need to keep trying so hard,” she waves a dismissive hand at him, then ducks her head under the water. He waits patiently, determined to at least make her accept his genuine appreciation of what she gave to him. He’s ready when she comes back up, smoothing her hair out of her eyes.

“It’s not flattery, Yennefer. I know what makes a mother good or bad, and trust me, you’ve far more in common with the good.”

“And what would you know of bad mothering, bard. Soft as you are. I doubt you’ve known much real hardship,” she scoffs. It’s not an uncommon sentiment, and it’s one Jaskier’s encountered before. When he was younger it hurt more keenly, that just because he presents a certain way people would make assumptions about his supposed weakness: it’s only age and experience that lets him laugh this off.

“I’d know more than you think, Yennefer.” He leaves her to her bath, exhausted by the emotional gymnastics of the day. At least he has Yennefer’s friendship now, and that’s enough to satisfy him.

* * *

Jaskier hands the letter off to Vesemir the next morning. It’s not much more than a perfunctory update and profuse apology, but he sends it off, care of the dean, and hopes it will be enough to explain his absence. Oh, he’s sure they’d let him teach again, and truthfully, he’s more upset about accidently shirking his duties than anything else, but it’s rather out of his hands now, so he tries not to make himself worry over it too much since he can’t exactly do anything about it from Kaer Morhen.

Over the next few days, things kind of fall back into the routine they’d established while he was healing, but now that Jaskier is waking up with the rest of the keep he spends his mornings observing Geralt train Ciri up close. It’s more immediately interesting than reading on his own, and besides, he’s done enough research for the song; he’s just composing now. So he watches as Geralt runs Ciri through the complicated obstacle course in the training grounds, and Jaskier sits in various places, seeking out the sun to bask in for what meagre warmth it can grant him, writing down snatches of music and lyrics as inspiration hits him.

He and Geralt have both been ignoring the lingering tension since... whatever the encounter the other day in the hall had been about, and Jaskier is one hundred percent fine with the current state of affairs continuing on. There’s a peaceful lull to their days now, and he doesn’t want to risk upsetting it. He’s content, an emotion he knows to appreciate when it’s around.

Vesemir is still down mountain, gathering more supplies. Jaskier feels vaguely guilty about the burden his presence is on the witchers of Kaer Morhen. Right now it’s just the four of them, but Geralt says that number may double depending on which of his brothers come home this year. Over the years, Jaskier had teased stories about his brothers out of Geralt, but in truth he’d only actually met Eskel. Lambert is still a mystery to him, and Geralt has only recently mentioned that there might be a Griffin witcher coming, and apparently, Lambert’s been making friends with a Cat School witcher, but Jaskier knows even less about that than he does the Griffin. Still, he thinks, trying to draw his attention back to heel, he wants to do something nice for Vesemir to make up for the additional mouths that have necessitated this supply run. He’s pushing himself to finish the leshen song before Vesemir gets back, and so far, he’s got the title and half a verse, but the chorus is causing him trouble, and he’s only got the briefest whisper of thought as to what his bridge might sound like. It would be easier if he had his lute, but that was still in his apartment at Oxenfurt, since he hadn’t wanted to take it to Loretta’s. A tiny piece of good fortune in this whole sordid affair.

He’s so focused on working out the composition that he doesn’t realize Geralt and Ciri have finished training until a shadow crosses his notebook, and he has to blink up at the shadowy figure blocking out his sunlight.

“You’re not transparent, did you know that?” he asks Geralt, smiling at him regardless.

“About what?” Geralt asks cautiously, which doesn’t make any sense. Jaskier’s smile slips into a frown, and he gestures vaguely at his now shadowed journal.

“I meant because of the sun?”

Geralt squints menacingly at the shadow he’s casting and then nods, as if that’s the end of that, and Jaskier would normally let it go, but they’d been friends for over twenty years and in all that time Geralt had been many things, but cautious was hardly one of them.

“What did you think I meant?” And Geralt freezes, like a rabbit gone to ground, before he starts back up again, spine straight, chin up, closed off.

“Doesn’t matter, I—” and then he cuts himself off again, a move far more like Jaskier than Geralt, which is alarming all on its own. Geralt doesn’t stumble over his words like this, doesn’t falter— not unless he’s filled with rage, and even then, he falls more to (devastating) eloquence than he does stops and starts. Jaskier is really, truly suspicious now, all previous contentment fled, and he stands up, letting his journal and pen drop unheeded to the ground.

“What did you think I meant, Geralt?” Jaskier asks, letting his voice firm: Jaskier is a bard, and storytelling his passion— he has steel in his spine and flowers on his cuffs and he’s not afraid to use either when it benefits him.

* * *

Geralt had only wanted to see what Jaskier was up to. He didn’t mean to start this particular conversation: had in fact, been content to never have this conversation. What could he offer Jaskier but more misery and— Jaskier wasn’t like Yennefer, he wouldn’t live forever like she very well might. There was an impermanence to Jaskier that scared him; he remembered Jaskier, bleeding and broken on the bed after the transformation, being reminded as Jaskier’s blood sunk into the creases of his palms that the bard could be hurt, and taken from him, could be— could be killed. It had shaken something loose.

Some fear laid bare that Jaskier might be gone forever and Geralt would have wasted it. It’s an idea once sprung he can’t put back in its box, and if he almost spilled it in the hallway the other day, wanting Jaskier to know how much he was appreciated, then it’s an idea he can’t keep back today at all.

It occurs to him that this is the kind of love Jaskier has been giving him all these years, quietly devoted to the happiness of the person on the opposite of your campfire, wanting them to know they were loved, not in expectation of being loved in return, but just because they deserved to know that they _were_ loved, and that that love was worth sharing even at the expense of his own happiness.

It’s the kind of quiet devotion that seems so unsuited to Jaskier as he presents himself, loud and boisterous and dipping out of beds and side windows at early hours, running from clandestine lovers and asking for Geralt’s protection at royal banquets so he isn’t murdered by a vengeful cuckold— but here, isn’t this the proof of it then, that Jaskier is still here, two decades and half a lifetime and all the arguments and adventures and laughter later. That he chooses every day to stay with him, that he seems honestly happy to be making the choice— isn’t that proof enough?

Jaskier is still waiting on an answer, puffed up like an angry cat about to spit because he thinks Geralt is hiding something from him— that Geralt could ever hide anything from him when Jaskier sees right through him, always. (And _oh_ that’s a revelation too. They’ve never had secrets, never had the chance because they’ve lived in each other’s pockets for two decades and change and that’s half a mortal life already, isn’t it?)

“You love me.” Which, is not what he meant to say at all, but it’s out there now and Jaskier has reared back like he’s been struck, shock and no small amount of devastation flashing across his face before it's gone, replaced by a passivity that Geralt has only ever seen once before, high on a mountain with the wind whipping their hair into their faces. He hurries on, needing to fix it, needing that look, that reminder, to be wiped out. “I...” it’s hard to say, but they’re just words, just words in between him and the end of the pain on Jaskier’s face and it’s never been easier to say anything if that’s the point. “I love you, too.” Jaskier freezes, and horrifyingly his eyes are sparkling with unshed tears now.

“You bastard,” he says, quiet and strangled with emotion, “You bastard, you can’t say that if you don’t mean it the same way I do, don’t do that to me.” 

“I do, I mean it the same way you say it, don’t—” Jaskier is shaking his head, tears splashing out in wild arcs, flung by the force of his denial. “Jaskier, please,” Geralt says, stepping forward finally to gather him in his arms, “Why are you crying?”

“Because this is rather a fucking lot to just drop on me all at once, Geralt!” he shouts into Geralt’s chest, muffled by how tightly Geralt is holding him.

“Is this... Are you...” he can’t ask it, stopping, and starting, and then Jaskier reaches one hand up to the back of Geralt’s neck and yanks him down into the most forceful (wet) kiss of his life. He tastes like honey and salt, like... coming home. It’s all the answer he needed.

* * *

Ciri sees Geralt head over to where Jaskier has been composing while they train, and even though she’s supposed to be heading straight for Yennefer and her afternoon lessons, she ducks around the corner of the keep to hide and watch. They’ve been acting weird around each other for the last two days, ever since Vesemir left, though Ciri can’t imagine what that has to do with it. Adults are weird though, so she’s willing to let it slide, but she does want to see what happens between the two of them.

Jaskier kind of reminds her of Eist, now that he’s an adult, and as comforting as it is to see the ways in which he’s still Julian, he’s also more reserved with her now in a way that she knows means he can’t forget she’s a princess. She kind of hopes that will go away, now that she doesn’t— well she’s not really a princess anymore, is she. But she cares for him, and Geralt too, and she wants this weirdness between them to disappear.

Geralt stands tall over Jaskier, and they only exchange a few words before Jaskier stands up too: she wishes, just for a moment that her ears were sharper, just so she could hear what they were talking about. They talk for another moment, and Ciri is about to give it up as a bad job and hurry so she’s not late, but then Jaskier pulls back from Geralt like he’s been slapped; Geralt wouldn’t, not ever, but the shock of the sudden movement has her attention zeroed back in on them. The stone wall scrapes her arms as she braces against it, trying to get a better vantage point on the scene without them noticing. But then again, they’re talking with such intensity that she doesn’t think she even could draw their attention away from each other.

It looks like Jaskier is crying, and her heart _hurts_ , sudden anxiety compressing her chest, (will he leave if he’s unhappy? Will she lose someone else?) but then Geralt is hugging him and as she watches, Jaskier— oh _gross!_ She turns away, not wanting to see them kiss each other (though secretly she’s very glad at this turn of events.) They remind her a lot of... well of Grandmother and Eist, and as painful as that memory is, it also feels right to her, to see them together.

She leaves them to it, hopeful that Yennefer won’t be too upset by her lateness. Maybe the news will cheer her up.

* * *

The conversation with Jaskier in the bath had brought up memories that Yennefer has thought long since put to rest. She hasn’t thought of her mother since her step-father’s blood was still crusted beneath her fingernails, and yet now, it’s all her mind wants to focus on. She’s been thinking of herself as taking a mothering role in her approach to Ciri, because it was what she wanted, to be a mother, to be important, but now...

Is she even capable? What does she know of being a mother? Her own had been a terrible example, weak and ineffectual, distant from her but overly affectionate with the others— (and how long had it taken her to realize that wasn’t her failing, but her mother’s?) Is she destined to fail the same way? Does Ciri even want her to be her mother?

She shakes her arms out, irritated with the direction her thoughts are going, tired of the circular logic she can’t seem to escape from. It’s been two days since the baths, and still, the conversation won’t leave her alone. Jaskier had said she was a good mother... but hadn’t she ignored him too? She didn’t tell him he was really an adult, hadn’t really done anything... special or out of the ordinary. She’d had to force-feed him a potion and cut his palm, and he screamed against her chest as she kept him still—

_Fuck_ , she’s doing it again. Geralt thought she would be a bad mother, and she hadn’t really done anything to disprove that, had she. Jaskier’s words play again in her head, and she wants to believe them. But there’s a nagging doubt that won’t release her. What does he know of parenting to rate someone good or bad? What could he possibly know about motherhood? She growls out loud, wanting to scream but pushing it down because Ciri’s lessons are about to start. If Ciri ever arrives.

Yennefer paces, shaking her arms out again, watching the door. It’s probably only a few minutes in reality, but Yennefer is already in a foul mood and it doesn’t improve when Ciri tumbles through the doorway, grinning like a maniac.

“You’re late.” _Shit_ , immediately it sounds too harsh, too cool, too much like Tissaia, (but not the Tissaia who said her name, the Tissaia that called her piglet, that cared only behind a layer of contempt, a layer that Yennefer both needed and despised— fueling her and spurning her in equal measure: Yennefer doesn’t want to be that to Ciri, and _fuck_ she really is horrible at this.)

“Sorry. I was spying on Jaskier and Geralt,” Ciri says, blithely ignoring Yennefer’s tone. Maybe all is not lost. “They kissed,” Ciri gags dramatically, then giggles, gathering up her skirts to sit down at the workbench. “Which, _gross_ ,” she offers, smiling up at Yennefer, “so I thought I’d better hurry to make it here before they did anything worse.” She shivers in overblown disgust, and then opens up the copy of _Ars Magicka_ Yennefer has been having her read from, getting to work. Yennefer nods tightly, pleased her slip-up hasn’t cost anything, but still thrumming with tension. She clenches her hands into tight fists, crossing them behind her back. She can do this. She can hold it together through training at least.

“Pay special attention to the theory of containment.” She says, gathering the ingredients to make harmless smoke bombs. She’ll have Ciri catch them this afternoon in practice. Having something to do occupies her hands, and she hopes it will help push her errant thoughts to the side. “Once you think you’ve got it, we’ll go practice it in the courtyard.” 

She loses herself to the meditative repetitiveness of her actions, mixing the berthollet salt into the magnesite, folding in the soda ash: it takes but the whisper of magic (and gods, is she happy that it’s back to normal now, no more of that thudding emptiness or the racing fire of before, just a casual calm, a slight tingle of remembered power) to turn the ingredients into cubes, and she drops her little cubes in jars, imbuing them with colors as she goes. If all else fails at least the smoke will be pretty to look at.

“Yennefer,” Ciri starts, pulling Yen away from her task some indeterminate amount of time later, “this says that containment spells are ‘formed by the fortitude of the mage dominating chaos itself with precision and focus commensurate to the force they are containing’ but I thought you said magic was about _organizing_ chaos. And this doesn’t say anything about balance at all.”

Yennefer smirks, carefully twisting lids on the jars she’s filled, “I did say that. This then, is the second rule of magic, Ciri. For everything you think you know about it, still there is more to discover.” She sets the jars down, arranging them in a line on the workbench. “Chaos, by its very nature, is indefinable. The more you try to pin it down and assign rules and limitations to it, the more it lashes out and finds ways to circumvent your understanding of it.”

“Well then how am I supposed to learn anything if the rules keep changing?” Ciri groans, slumping over the book. The petulant whine in her voice grates against Yennefer, but she holds in her irritation, reminding herself that she’s not mad at Ciri, it’s just her bad mood persisting.

“That’s the trick,” she says, tapping the first of her jars to seal it and make the glass safer. If Ciri fails to contain the explosion the glass will turn to rubber after it shatters, saving any potential danger from cuts. “You need to be prepared to bend with Chaos, and to stand firm against it. You have to know when to demand that it listen to you, to strike hard and fast and burn off the energy immediately— when you use magic as a force it requires direct energy to work, and so you must find something to take that place; a flower to die, a field to go barren— a sacrifice, if you’re in particular need.”

Ciri gasps, scandalized and then reaches out to pick up one of Yennefer’s jars, rolling it around her palms and examining the contents. It ruins the order, and Yennefer pushes down another flash of irritation, forcing her mind to stay on track. “But when you are using magic to change or transform, the balance is... weighted towards different requirements.”

Ciri looks up from the jar, frowning at Yennefer’s pause. “Like what?” she asks, setting the jar back down and folding her arms across the book, leaning in over them.

“Like pain.” Yennefer says simply. “Like parts of you that you can’t get back. Like...” she trails off, remembering the things she has sacrificed, the balance that has cost her so very much to maintain. “Like emotions sometimes,” she continues, pushing forward, not wanting to dwell on the darker parts of her past. She starts casting her spells on the jars again, needing something to do with her hands. “You have to remember that Chaos is a force not well-suited to being contained. It has a will of its own and you need to both respect that and be willing and able to overcome it as well. It’s the difference between a hedge-witch and a real mage: the ability to bend magic to your own will, rather than being limited by the first stumbling-block you encounter.”

Ciri nods, considering, and then looks back at her book. “So basically what it’s saying is that in order to contain something with Chaos, I have to have the stronger will?” Yennefer makes a quiet agreeing noise, eyeballing the jars to try and decide if she got them all. “And because I’m asking for change, not a force, I need to have enough emotion to feed to it so it actually changes the magic, instead of drawing from something around me?”

“Basically.” Yennefer says flatly, deciding that she’s made the jars safe enough to use. She pushes them to the side, going over to the closet to grab a cloth bag so she can transport them easier. “Hearing the incantation for the last one helped you to feel the shape of it,” she calls out, half muffled by the closet she’s shoulder deep in, “I can give you a practical demonstration for this one as well if you’d like.” She extracts a bag, finally, yanking it out from between two boxes that look positively ancient. If she was going to stay here long-term she’d need to clean this out she thought, kicking idly at the boxes to watch the dust float off.

“I don’t need the words, but...” Ciri trails off, and Yennefer closes the closet, coming over to meet her at the table again. She glances at Ciri when she doesn’t continue, placing the jars in her bag slowly. “Could you describe it to me?” she asks, when she catches Yennefer’s full attention. “It’s just... most of my magic is kind of... explosive.” Yennefer catches the briefest flash of a monolith dropped as the ground cracks open, before it recedes. She makes a note to teach Ciri how to shield her mind and stop that from happening, (a little part of her is impressed by the raw power of that kind of magic, a wordless shriek enough to rip the ground asunder? Unfocused? But she can see, can _feel_ , exactly how terrifying that is to Ciri so she doesn’t linger.)

“It will feel exactly like playing catch.” She tosses the jar in her hand to Ciri, instead of placing it in her bag, and Ciri only fumbles it a little before she secures it, halting its momentum. “The way you caught that jar— how did it feel?”

Ciri frowns, tossing the jar between her hands lightly. “It feels like... reacting.” She tosses it back to Yennefer, who stows it safely in the pack. They clink together like music when she hauls it over her shoulder, the bulk of it settling low against her hip.

“The first time you ever caught something, I bet it didn’t feel like reacting.” Ciri rolls her eyes, which Yennefer ignores, and comes to open the door as they both set off for the courtyard. “Magic, especially basic magic like this, begins to feel like that, like an instinct, a move so ingrained into how you interact with the world that you don’t even have to think about how to do it. You just do it.”

“But so, how do I do it the first time. Before it becomes a reflex?”

“Practice.” Yennefer snaps, feeling the questions grate against her skin. This wouldn’t irritate her normally, she knows that, so she pushes it down, regretting her sharp tone immediately as Ciri draws back, ever so slightly. “We’ll start small,” she says, taking care to soften her tone, dropping her shoulders so they’re not so tightly wound. “We won’t work up to the big stuff until you’re ready.”

Ciri doesn’t say anything to that, and they make the rest of the walk to the courtyard in a semi-tense silence.

“Oh, _gross_!” Ciri calls out as they finally come out into the sun shining on the courtyard. Yennefer looks up, slightly startled, to find that the source of Ciri’s delighted disgust is Jaskier and Geralt making out against the Eastern wall. Geralt has Jaskier almost entirely hidden behind the bulk of him, but he jumps to the side at Ciri’s exclamation, as flustered as she’s ever seen him, revealing a quite happily rumpled Jaskier, smiling like nothing so much as a pleased cat. This is fine. They deserve each other. Really. It doesn’t bother Yennefer at all.

“What brings you out here?” he shouts at them, like this isn’t the standard schedule they’ve been keeping to for near on three weeks by now.

“Training,” Ciri says, happily enough, bouncing in place slightly in her eagerness.

“You two have finally figured it out, I see.” Yennefer’s contribution to the conversation gets her open-mouthed shock from Geralt, and Jaskier to puff up in indignation, and she would cackle if she were given to such overt showings of mirth, (or if she were less base-line irritated still).

Ignoring them, she picks a good spot on the field where neither Ciri nor herself will need to worry about the sun in their eyes, and then directs Ciri to stand some twenty feet from her, just enough space to get a good arc on her projectiles. Jaskier and Geralt are quibbling about something in the background, but they seem in good spirits as they do it, so she ignores them, focusing on Ciri. It does her no harm if they want to watch.

* * *

Ciri wishes that Jaskier and Geralt weren’t watching her train with Yennefer. She still doesn’t feel fully comfortable with her magic, and her understanding of how it works, (while far more nuanced after two weeks of training with Yennefer) still starts from a place of Magic Causes Catastrophe, and their mere presence makes her nervous that she might lose control and murder them all if she messes up. Admittedly, it’s an unlikely proposition, given that she’s meant to be containing magic, but Chaos is, at its core, highly unpredictable already, as Yennefer always says, and she can’t get the fear to go away.

Yennefer lobs another of the little jars at her, and Ciri reaches out, trying to stop it from exploding into a burst of brightly colored smoke. This is the tenth little jar in as many minutes that Yennefer has chucked at her, and yet again her magic fails to do anything but putter in response to Ciri’s calls on it. She watches in dismay as it joins the ranks of the other little jars, exploding harmlessly midair, sending shards of rubber glass to plunk into the ground and smoke to pour forth from inside. She sighs, looking at the color and glass strewn field between her and Yennefer, trying to avoid actually having to look at the mage.

“You’ve got this!” Jaskier calls from where he’s leaning up against Geralt’s chest on the sidelines. He’s basically using the witcher as a chair, and normally it would make Ciri smile, but Grandma and Eist used to sit like that and with her mood already plummeting because of her failures it just makes her want them to go away and be suffocatingly happy elsewhere.

Ciri frowns, looking back at Yennefer, who hasn’t said anything in between the last two throws.

“What am I doing wrong?” she finally asks, defeated by her inability to get this. Yennefer sighs, a quick irritated huff of sound, and it grates against Ciri’s nerves.

“You need to _want_ to contain it, Cirilla. If you’re afraid to use your magic it won’t respond at all. You have to be _stronger_ than Chaos not weak and whimpering before it like you are _afraid_ of it.” Yennefer spit out.

“I do want to contain it!” Ciri yells back, ignoring the concerned looks from their audience. Who asked them to watch anyways? Not Ciri. “Throw me the next bottle.” She growls. She’ll show Yennefer. She’ll show everyone here what she can do.

Yennefer picks up the bottle and lobs it without looking and Ciri reaches deep inside of herself where the pull from her connection to chaos is strongest and she screams as she reaches forward to try and stop the jar from exploding.

Mistake.

The jar explodes with three times as much power as the others, a sudden maelstrom of brightly colored smoke obscuring the field, so dense that Ciri can’t see through it. She cuts herself off, trembling with the force and shock of what she’s just done.

A sudden wind sweeps through, and as the field clears Ciri can see that Yennefer is the one controlling this conjured maelstrom. The sudden jealousy of watching Yennefer effortlessly control her magic makes something hot and fierce take over Ciri’s chest. It’s not _fair._

“Let’s not do that again,” Jaskier says, dabbing at his face. Ciri whirls to look at him, half a retort on her lips because it was _an accident_ , but she stops cold because that’s blood. He’s wiping blood from a cut on his cheek, a cut she put there. _No, oh no,_ what has she _done?_ Cold horror drenches down her spine and she bolts, running almost before she knows why. They can’t get rid of her if they can’t find her she thinks semi-hysterically, running blind for the tears in her eyes. She ignores the cries of her name rising up behind her, just needing to be away. She would never do magic again, not if this was the outcome.

* * *

Yennefer finishes sending the smoke away, something small and weak curdling in her belly. _Fuck_. She’d properly cocked that up, hadn’t she?

“Let’s not do that again,” Jaskier says, wiping blood from his— _How?_ Even with the force of the explosion her initial spell to protect the glass from becoming a weapon should have held. _Fuck_ , she must have missed one because she had been in a pissy mood and she let that cloud her mind and distract her and now Jaskier is bleeding, and Ciri is— Well, _double fuck_ , she thinks, looking back up to find that Ciri is running away, sobbing from the sounds of it.

Yennefer’s stone heart cracks around the force of what she’s done here and all her anger is washed away in a sudden riptide of sorrow and misery. _Fucking shit_ , but she’d known she wasn’t cut out for this, hadn’t she? Geralt was right, she would be a... has been a terrible mother and Ciri is paying the price.

She can’t be here, exposed— like the nerve of a rotted tooth, not where they can see just how much and how quickly she’s failed at the only thing she’d ever wanted but couldn’t have.

* * *

It all got fucked up so quickly that Jaskier is still blinking stupidly at the blood on his hand when Geralt stands them both up. (Distantly, Jaskier recognizes that as kind of hot, actually, that Geralt can just... deadlift him from the ground at the same time he’s lifting his own weight, but he’s more immediately focused on the absolute mess that just played out in front of them, so he files it away to unpack later.)

Geralt looks torn, but he’s already leaning more towards the direction Ciri had stormed off in.

“Go,” Jaskier says, shooing him along with the hand not wiping blood off his cheek. “I’m fine and so is Yennefer, but I rather think Ciri needs you. I’ll go after Yennefer.”

“You’re sure?” To Geralt’s credit he only looks slightly dubious at the idea of Jaskier being the one to comfort the witch, which is probably fair considering that his new esteem of her has only been around for about two weeks. What’s two weeks to two decades? What’s two decades to a witcher or a sorceress?

“Yes, I’m sure.” Geralt swoops in for a quick kiss, there and then gone so quickly Jaskier would almost worry he’d imagined it except his lips are still tingling from the glancing pressure. He smiles dopily, wiping more blood from his cheek. It’s a small cut, but facial wounds bleed thinly and in volume. He’s cut himself shaving enough to know it will clear up if he just keeps pressure on it, but he can’t do that except with his shirt sleeve and it feels a little bit sacrilegious to do that considering this shirt is very technically someone else’s. All his clothes are right now, on account of Nilfgaard not bothering to take his luggage when they kidnapped him.

(He wonders briefly if Lottie sold the horse and his things, then dismisses the thought as being both too painful and perhaps uncharitable of him. She’d cried after all, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she wailed out her apologies in the kitchen? Didn’t that mean something?)

Irritated with the direction of his thoughts, Jaskier decides that a witcher shirt has definitely seen worse substances than human blood, and pulls the sleeve over the palm of his hand so he can use it to stem the bleeding. Geralt has already disappeared while Jaskier was busy thinking very hard about how much he should not be thinking about certain events, and he realizes he lost whatever lead he had on Yennefer’s whereabouts because she’s completely gone. Meaning he’ll have to find her by using his wits and what he knows about her, not just by running in the general direction she’d gone until he sees her. He’s still not that fast on his feet anyways, (magic healing is all well and good, but it requires so much energy that running—something Jaskier previously really only did to escape angry husbands, wives, mothers, and occasionally monsters, had not been high on his list of recovery goals.)

He dismisses her own rooms out of hand, figuring that she wouldn’t want to be somewhere enclosed right now. That rules out the stables, and the workroom too—which Jaskier still hasn’t found, actually, so he wouldn’t be able to follow here there anyways. He starts walking towards the eastern curtain wall, hoping that she’s somewhere visible at least.

* * *

Geralt finds Ciri crying in the west courtyard, curled up around the remains of what used to be a fountain, but now is just the tilted remains of a water dryad carved of stone. He sits down just on the other side of the statue from her, content to give her space for now. Her crying makes his insides itchy, like he needs to take physical action and work out the uncomfortable knot of pressure— but there’s no enemy to fight, and this isn’t the same as when she woke from one her nightmares, and could easily be soothed just by holding her close. This is going to need words to fix. Geralt is many things, but good at fixing thing with words is not one of those things. He’s getting better, he thinks, given that he’s managed to fix two relationships he thought forever ruined within mere days of each other, but this isn’t really his relationship to mend. He’s just here to listen and offer comfort.

They sit for a long time, so Geralt slips into mediation, closing his eyes to focus on Ciri’s breathing where she sits behind the statue. Eventually, she shifts, holding her breath in as she crawls out from underneath her hiding spot. She comes to sit in front of him, and he listens to her move, tracking her progress by sound alone. When she settles finally, mirroring his pose, he opens his eyes, slightly surprised to see the shadows have lengthened almost to dusk in the time that’s elapsed. She’s staring at the ground, worrying the hem of her shirt sleeve between her thumb and forefinger. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying, the tip of her nose bright red and her cheeks are flushed, but there’s no more scent of distress floating off of her.

“Okay?” he asks, when she maintains her silence, startling her into looking up at him finally. Her eyes, though red, are clear, and she’s calmed down significantly.

“Yeah,” she offers lowly, sounding worn out and clearly evasive. Geralt wishes briefly that Jaskier was here, because he has the sudden intimation that she’s not going to talk unless he teases it out of her, and that he probably should at the very least try for that— this is an area where Jaskier is far better suited than he.

“Do you...want to talk about it?” he offers, clumsy and inelegant, but it’s all he has when it comes to these conversations. Instead of answering his questions, Ciri comes back with one of her own.

“Does Yennefer hate me now?” Geralt stares at her blankly, surprised by the question. That’s not what he thought this was about. “because you said that she left you after an argument and I didn’t mean to make her leave, I swear.” Ciri continues, words tumbling out faster and faster as she works herself up.

“No.” Geralt says, reaching forward to grip her hands, “Yennefer left me because I was foolish and I did something cruel to her, this is not the same.”

“But I fucked up.”

“That doesn’t mean she hates you. I fucked up and she came back, and she likes you a lot more than she likes me.” Ciri giggles at that, wiping her arm across her nose and then crawling forward into his lap. She settles against his chest, and he smooths her hair out of his face, tucking her head under his chin. They’ll be alright.

“Is Jaskier okay?” she asks, slightly muffled by having her face mashed into his shirt.

“Yeah, it was only a little cut. He’s had worse.” Geralt replies, thinking of the most recent ‘worse’ Jaskier had faced, but shuddering away from thinking too deeply on it. At least this was the kind of injury that would heal quickly, and was hardly big enough to call an injury truly. He was more worried about Yennefer than Jaskier, but he just had to trust that Jaskier knew what he was doing.

* * *

Jaskier find Yennefer on top of the eastern wall, and it’s a testament to just how upset she is that she doesn’t react to his approach, clumsy and inelegant as it is. He kicks scree out of the way, clearing off a place to sit along the crumbling battlement. Yennefer is holding herself perfectly still and silent, staring out over the valley, and as Jaskier settles down next to her, he maintains the silence, simply enjoying the view as he waits her out.

The valley is gorgeous, long shadows from the sun setting behind them creeping out over the oranges and yellows and reds of the changing leaves, interspersed with loose pockets of green where the evergreens have congregated. Jaskier raises his hand and watches the shadow he casts move in time with him. He tries several times to push his hand into the right shape to form a bunny, an old trick he learned from Priscilla when they were fresh faced babies just starting out at Oxenfurt. He used to be quite good at the shadow figures, but he had nothing on Essi Daven, who blew even Priscilla away with her complicated figures that she wove grandiose tales around. She used to be able to make a wyvern with just the shadows her hands cast. Jaskier hasn’t had much use or time for them in ages, but a little harmless fun can do wonders for healing.

Yennefer remains silent beside him, watching his shadowy pantomime but not commenting. Giving up on the rabbit, Jaskier tries a new shape, folding his hand flat to resemble a duck’s bill, except for his pinky finger, which he sticks straight up and slightly behind his crooked middle finger, which is slightly bent at the last knuckle. He flips his wrist sideways, so the resulting shadow is of—

“Is that a fucking wolf.” Yennefer’s voice is drier than the inside of a noonwraith’s arsehole, and exactly the intended effect of Jaskier’s shadow-play. Smirking, he makes the wolf howl, “awooing” softly under his breath until Yennefer rolls her eyes and pushes against his shoulder as if to shove him off the wall. “Watch it bard,” she says, trying, and failing, to hide her small smile, “it’s a long fall.”

“Bah,” Jaskier puffs out, dropping the wolf, and leaning back on his palms, ignoring the sharp pin-pricks of tiny rocks and debris pushing into his skin. “You’d catch me. I’ve got it on good authority you’re invested in my continued presence in your life.”

“And whose authority is that?” Yennefer asks, still staring out over the valley in lieu of meeting Jaskier’s eyes.

“This is twice now you’ve saved my life, and only one of those was because Geralt asked it of you. You don’t strike me as the type of woman to do things against her will.”

Yennefer snorts, as if Jaskier has told a joke and then leans forward over her knees to drop her face into her hands. “Why are you here, bard.” It should be a question probably, but Yennefer’s voice is so flat (and muffled by her palms) that Jaskier has the sense to know it’s time to tread more softly.

He considers several possible openings, _Because I care about you,_ dismissed for being too bare, _Geralt needed to go see to Ciri,_ true but callous and failed to account for Jaskier’s willingness to go after Yennefer regardless, _Why wouldn’t I be here,_ while true, definitely too vulnerable to not raise Yennefer’s hackles right now. Ah, _fuck it._

“I am here because even powerful sorceresses sometimes need to vent to their friends.”

“And are we friends, bard?”

“Well you’re hardly my mother,” and _oh_ , that’s the ticket. She flinches, and he feels briefly guilty for pressing on such an obvious wound, but she wouldn’t let him have the conversation if he didn’t broach it first.

“I’m hardly any mother at all.” She says, which is bullshit but well, that’s what he’s here to talk about isn’t he.

“And what would you know of mothering?” he asks, taking a vindictive pleasure in watching her recall her own words turned back on her. She smirks at him slightly, no doubt impressed by the quickness of his phrasing. (He hopes she’s impressed anyways... he finds he cares greatly for her opinion of him as of late.)

“I take your point bard, so just tell me what you have come to say and leave me be.” She says, pulling herself back up. He’s constantly impressed by the regalness she carries, a product of being a sorceress, or of her time at court, or perhaps just something innate about Yennefer herself, a kind of effortless grace that comes from constantly performing for others. It’s one he’s familiar with, but he sheds his when he’s not called on for it in court. Yennefer carries it with her always.

He looks back out over the valley, watching their shadows. Putting his thoughts in order.

“When I was growing up, my mother didn’t love me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yennefer turn to look at him, surprise flashing across her face before it evens back out to neutral attentiveness. “Or, I thought she didn’t love me, and that sort of became the same thing after a while.” He takes a deep breath, still watching the valley. He can’t bring himself to watch Yennefer’s face while he rips himself open in front of her. “When I was a kid, I didn’t understand her, because she was cold and distant sometimes, and others... really sort of everything you’d ever want in a mother. Because I was a kid, and because I didn’t know any better, I used to think that her shifting moods was my fault.” He laughs, drily, and pushes his hair off his forehead, fighting the sudden sting of the wind whipping the strands into his eyes. “Always thought I was the center of everything, y’know?” He smiles, chancing a glance at Yennefer. She meets his gaze steadily, offering nothing but her continued patience. “She wasn’t a classically affectionate woman, my mother. Much more likely to back away from a hug than scoop you up in one, but she did love me. She just...” he pauses, wanting... needing to explain this right. “She had only her own mode of communication, yeah?”

“What does this have to do with me, Jaskier?” Yennefer asks, after he has been silent for too long.

“My mother spoke her own language, and I do mean that literally.” Jaskier says, picking up the thread of his story and ignoring Yennefer’s question. “It’s an old strain of Common that really only still exists in heavily remote areas, and it’s dying out the more civilization spreads. Nilfgaard’s northwards conquest is already destroying it. When they took Ebbing, the first village where I ever heard someone besides my mother speak the old tongue was destroyed. One outpost, gone already, and there are so few to begin with. It’s...” he pauses searching for a word that will encompass the incomprehensible horror it fills him with. Nothing comes, except, “devastating.” Even that isn’t close enough to the awfulness of that kind of loss, but it’s the closest he can get in this tongue. “It’s a uniquely lonely experience, to be the only speaker of a dying language, and it affected her a lot more than I think she could deal with after a time. My father didn’t help,” he says, brushing past the pain of that particular section of his story. “He was a cruel man in a lot of ways, and in most others just a general bastard. He kept her contained and wouldn’t let her speak it, so she retreated, pulling more and more into herself, until eventually, she killed herself only a year or so after I had graduated from Oxenfurt.”

He blinks out at the valley, feeling the sting of that pain fresh in his chest, swallowing down the lump in his throat because he had a point for this dammit. Yennefer reaches over and places a hand on his knee, and he grasps it in both of his, holding tight.

“Jaskier means buttercup in the old tongue. It’s a poisonous flower, and when I was a little kid my mother used to call me that on her good days, it was like...” he swallows again, unearthing the words from a box in his chest he hasn’t touched in twenty years. “It was the clearest signal I had that she did love me. She never said the words to me, but she would call me Julek, or her little buttercup, Jaskier, and she would drink her morning tea with me, or sing a song just for me, and that was enough. It had to be enough because it was all she could give to me, but it...” A tear rolls off his nose and he feels stupid, putting himself in a position to get this sad in the first place, but if anyone needs to hear this its Yennefer. “It’s how I knew she loved me. And that was all I needed, really.” He looks up at Yennefer, meeting her confused eyes. “I didn’t worry when I was with you.” she gasps, trying reflexively to pull her hand away, but he grasps it tighter, holding her steady because she needs to know this. “That’s what good mothering is, Yennefer. That’s all it comes down to. Does your child know you love them?”

Yennefer succeeds in pulling her hand away, turning away from Jaskier to look down the wall where it leads directly into the mountainside. He takes the moment hidden from her view to wipe the tears from his eyes, waiting anxiously to see if his gamble worked.

“My father sold me to the brotherhood for four crowns.” Jaskier can hardly hear her words, whispered away from him as they are, but he gasps in shared pain for the injustice of that transaction all the same. He reaches out, just to touch the edge of her dress where it’s laying over the rock wall. She reaches back and grasps his hand, turning to look back at the valley. “Less than the price of a pig,” she laughs but it’s a ragged thing, ripped ugly from her chest. “My mentor called me piglet for the first year of training.” Jaskier must make some indication that he’s about to shout about the outrage that particular tidbit engenders in him, because Yennefer squeezes his hand in warning before he can even open his mouth. “I came to find some comfort in it. It...” she pauses, trailing off, still watching the valley. Their shadows are mingling together now, forming one giant monolith of shadow falling over the treetops. “It was recognition of where I started. And when finally she called me Yennefer, it was...” she pauses, using the hand not holding Jaskier’s to wipe a tear from her face, “it was like being reborn as a version of me that held no shame.” She smiles at him, beautiful, radiant, absolutely glowing. “Tissaia gave me my freedom, but you’re right, it was in her language not mine.” Yennefer tilts her chin up, casting her gaze to the few stars just starting to show up in the sky. Jaskier watches them with her, waiting for her to finish her thought. “I have been trying to find a way to talk to Ciri, but my language is borrowed from Tissaia, and I don’t want to use that one with her. I want to build a better one.”

“You already are,” Jaskier says, leaning into her shoulder. “Just because you lost your temper once with her doesn’t mean that you don’t love her, or that she doesn’t know it. My mother taught me a little of the old tongue, but some of it I learned after she passed, trying to track down any speakers left who would help me. One of them got the whole sorry story out of me, in the way of babcia’s everywhere, and she taught me a proverb, ‘ _Biada bez dzieci, biada i z dziećmi_.’”

“What does it mean?”

“’Children are uncertain comforts, but certain cares.’ They’re always going to bring you grief and anxiety, and you’re going to mess up and be driven to madness, but that doesn’t mean you’re not doing it right, Yennefer. In fact, I rather think that does mean that you’re doing at least as good as everyone else out there. Isn’t that a sort of comfort?”

Yennefer doesn’t answer, just leans her head against his, and they watch the stars come out together.

* * *

As is the way of things, they get over their moment of heightened passion by simply moving past it, comforted apart from each other as they were, and Yennefer and Ciri fall back into training and learning how to behave around each other. It’s heartwarming frankly, and Jaskier still enjoys watching them train.

He’s still not found the workroom, but that’s okay because watching the actual magical training part is far more fascinating. Today’s lesson seems to be about changing colors of inanimate objects, and Jaskier has helpfully volunteered his selection of stolen clothing, hoping to get something a little brighter than the drab browns and blacks of the cast-offs he’s currently been relegated to wearing. He’s hoping for a nice teal, or maybe a purple if Ciri can control it enough to stay that way, but for now he’s just appreciating the atmosphere of everyone getting along. Vesemir had arrived back that morning with enough supplies to see them though the winter and two witchers trailing after him. Eskel and Lambert are poised to be great fun, and Jaskier has a good feeling about them both. If what Geralt has told him is true he’ll like the both of them well enough. Right now they’ve engaged Geralt in some sort of ritual hunting trip and Geralt had checked in on him and Yennefer and Ciri more than three times each before he finally let himself be dragged off into the valley for whatever needed to happen between him and his brothers.

Things finally seems to be approaching a kind of calm, and with the snows creeping ever closer to the mountain, it seems increasingly like they will get to enjoy this extended peace. There are, of course, still worries to attend to, but with the pass snowed in and the safety of the keep walls and the people around him, Jaskier has very rarely felt safer. They can do nothing until the spring thaw anyways, so Jaskier endeavors to simply focus on what he can.

“Yennefer?” he calls out, watching as Ciri’s attempts to recolor the shirt results in it going up in flames suddenly. Yennefer waves a hand to put it out already looking at Jaskier, and ignoring Ciri as she pouts at the traitorous flaming shirt. Jaskier would laugh but he’s trying to stay focused. “You wouldn’t happen to be able to make a portal to Oxenfurt, would you?” He’d heard back from the university already: they'd extended their condolences for his experiences and offering to keep his apartments in order until such time as he could come back for them. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now that if Yennefer might be able to help him get some of his items back earlier rather than waiting for the spring thaw.

“I could, but we’d have to journey down into the valley first. There’s too much interference for a direct portal from here.”

“That’s fine enough, I just rather miss my lute. And my own clothes as well, not that you’re not doing a wonderful job, Cirilla!” he calls out, laughing delightedly when Ciri flips him off, and then laughing even harder when as a result her current pants attempt goes up in flames as well.

“Control, Ciri,” Yennefer says over her shoulder, still watching Jaskier. Behind her back Ciri throws up her hands and then refocuses, and Jaskier drags his attention similarly back to Yennefer.

“When Geralt gets back, then?” he asks, excited by the prospect. Yennefer nods, then, when Jaskier claps delightedly, rolls her eyes before turning back to her lesson with Ciri. But Jaskier sees the smile she’s not quick enough to hide completely. She’s happy here, settled into her relationship with Ciri and with Geralt and Jaskier in way that Jaskier would never have anticipated before everything that happened. They’re all different people now, in a lot of ways, Jaskier thinks, but not all of them are bad. In fact, Jaskier thinks, watching as Ciri finally succeeds in changing the color of a shirt to a fabulous burnt orange, and Yennefer pulls her into an affectionate hug, most of those changes are pretty godsdamned magical in nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god y'all, listen this chapter fought me every step of the way. Huge thanks are in order to the discord for cheering me on and for helping me get past blocks, KHansen and ghostinthelibrary especially many thanks y'all. 
> 
> Thank you to every single person who kudosed, who bookmarked, who read, but especially thank you to the people who commented: Y'all helped make this into what it is. This was supposed to be a quick 15k fic and instead its an honest to god for real bonafide NOVEL. Like holy hell y'all this is the longest thing I've EVER written and I'm so goddamn excited and proud of it and I really hope you liked it. Thank you so much for reading this far, and for being such a supportive and welcoming fandom. I posted my first story in May and since then I've really just felt incredibly accepted by this fandom in a way that hasn't always been true in a lot of others I've been a part of over the years. When i started this fic I was unemployed and languishing in quarantine and your continued support really provided the serotonin i needed to get through it. I'm incredibly pleased to announce however, that all those interviews paid off, and I have a job!!!! Yay!! (but also that was part of why this chapter took so much longer haha, i got hired literally two days before the school year started and they wanted me to teach on day one O.O YIKES) but i survived the first week and as a gift to both you and to myself I'm posting this chapter so we can finish out this journey.
> 
> Polish Idioms:   
> Na grubą gałąź trzeba grubego klina.  
>  You must meet roughness with roughness  
> Biada bez dzieci, biada i z dziećmi.  
>  Children are bound to cause their parents anxiety, and may or may not also bring them joy.  
> found @ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Polish_proverbs
> 
> If you made it this far, please consider leaving a comment to let me know what you thought! <3  
>  Stay tuned for the epilogue as well, which is going to be posted as a separate fic, at some point.


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